Vox 1944 February

Feb. 1944 (1943-44) II 3. Macalester-U.C. Conference pg 30-31 VOL. XVII No. I WINNIPEG, MAN.
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vox Content8 ••.
PUBLICATION OF UNITED COLLEGE
UNDERGRADUATES
WINNIPEG MAN.
EDITORIAL ;,., ;.,.. ..
A. C. Green
Page
3
Vol. XVII-No.1
Stuff • • •
•
FEBRUARY, 1944
c •
•
LIBERALISM 6
Gordon Harland
JUKE-BOX NOCTURNE . 9
Mary Turnbullll'i~~···:·,···_..··'--:···..·
PILLARS OF GOLD .. ; :....... 11
. c John H. Howes
Editor-in-Chief .................•............. AUBREY C. GREEN
Associate Editor ; _....... . B. HENDERSON
Art Editor' ,.., .- , ANN PHELPS
Business Manager ,,; ,..; ; MEGAN WILLOWS
Honorary Editor:
DR. A. R. M. LOWER
•
Cover . . .
The cover was designed
especially for Vox by
ANN OLSON, a student
in Collegiate. Miss Ol­son,
who says that she
"loves trees," has presented a typical Western Canadian
scene. The grey, beautiful serenity, and the trees
clinging to the sky have been portrayed with sympathy
and feeling.
POEMS 14
Harold Karr
CANADIAN POLITICS .... .e'k•...••;;............................ 15
H. Goldenberg
SOUVENIRS................. 18
Ann Phelps
ABNORMALITIES 20
Prof. A. R. Cragg
BIOLOGY SURVEYS MANKIND 21
B. Henderson
WE ALL DO IT ; ;.; ; , ,....... 24
Ray Atkinson
POEMS .,."...., 26
Mary McFarlane
INSIDE CANADA ,............. 27'
Ross Woodman
MOODS ~
A. C. Green
IMPRESSIONS OF SAROYAN ;.... 28
Lora Cantor
COUNTRY ROAD ,.......................................... 29
Jack Borland
TO BE OR NOT TO BE~ ....jA.~.c........ 3&
P.G.White ~
II I always buy my extra meat from a man at the
back door. I've never even seen a black market! ..
- ..
SWEET CAPORAL CIGARETTES
"The purest form in which tobacco can be smoked"
A. C. Green
Editorial . . .
"It is our human intelligence and our human courage which is on trial; it is incredible
that men who have brought the technique of physical discovery, and use to such perfection
will abdicate in the face of the infinitely more important human problems. What stands in
the way of a planned economy is a lot of OUTWORN TRADITIONS, MOTH-EATEN
SLOGANS AND CATCH-WORDS THAT DO SUBSTITUTIVE DUTY FOR THOUGHT,
AS WELL AS OUR ENTRENCHED PREDATORY SELF-INTERESTS. WE SHALL ONLY
MAKE A REAL BEGINNING IN INTELLIGENT THOUGHT WHEN WE CEASE MOUTH­ING
PLATITUDES . . ."-PROFESSOR JOHN DEWEY.
CANADIAN unity is not just a war-time
problem, expediency, or necessity; it is one
of the essentials for the future growth, progress
and prosperity of Canada. This problem of
unity is an intricate and a complicated one. It
involves the entire range of racial intolerance
and minority prejudice; and it encompasses the
vast field of human stupidity. To some the
solution seems to lie in a strong and militant
nationalism, to others, unity seems possible
only with the formation of a fluid, penetrating
cultural matrix. The majority, just don't care
However, unity itself, cold, enforced and
vigorous, can easily turn into a dangerous, sav­age
potential. It can lead to a destructive and
a restrictive nationalism. The
Dangers of unity achieved within Germany,
Nationalism especially in the pre-war and
early war days, has only receiv­ed
admiration from the decadent and the de­generate.
(It is with fear and shock that we
can recall the many sources of that admira­tion!)
We all remember the loud and vocifer­ous
cries of "-but, you must remember Hitler
is doing a lot for Germany." Yes, Hitler was
doing a lot. The reluctant (but secretly en­thusiastic)
admirers told us that he was re­pairing
the German "inferiority-complex"; and
they showed that he was building and inspiring
a new fervour, instilling new hope into the
3
masses. It is to be hoped that the "masses",
running frantically from the Russians, or
huddling and shivering in crude shelters in
Berlin, are grateful to Hitler and his inspira­tion.
We can feel sure that the tremulous lines
of unhappy refugees appreciate the benefits of
the great new Hitler-complex. This type of
propagated and inculcated national frenzy is a
vivid, and tragic example of what can still be
done with the modern, enlightened, twentieth
century man! Nationalism is a dangerous wea­pon
to tinker with. Inexperienced politicians
and power-hungry groups know well its dyna­mic
qualities and propaganda value. However,
Canada, although not yet a melting pot, is com­posed
of a strange mixture of many races. This
fact, plus the very youth of the country, would
prevent the formation of a strong barbaric
unity.
The cultural and the artistic branches of pro­paganda
are also in too weak a state to be used
with any great success. In spite of all this,
there are manifestations within
The Dead Canada that do suggest a latent
Issues reservoir for a strong nationalistic
party. The frightened minds of
some of our citizens are still clinging to ancient
pillars and symbols. They still have the com­fortable,
misty cobwebs over their eyes and
their hearts. The deficiencies of local traditions
and customs have been supplanted by imported
What Is
a Nation
traditions and imported signals from the dead
hand. Some of the people of Quebec maintain
in a strong and enthusiastic manner the re­stricting
"dead ideas" embodied in the long and
colorful past of their particular ideology. Other
sections of Canada cling desperately to the dead
aspects of imperialism and empire-traditions.
Minority races made sure to bring along their
own ve'rsion~ lind trunk-loads' of dead ideas and
dead issues.
Leonard Woolf' described the influence of
such ideas in a sharp manner when he stated:
". . . the strongest and the most important
factor about communal psychology is that its
content is largely the ideas, the beliefs, and the
aims of the dead. The dead man's hand was
always being stretched out of the grave to con­trol
property, fields and homes. There can be
no understanding of history which does not
take into consideration the diabolic control of
the psychological dead hand, dead mind, the
ghosts of beliefs; ideals which have turned rot­ten
with age, and from which all substance and
meaning has been sapped ... the old is always
stronger than the new; the dead stronger than
the living ..."
Many vague and generalized terms have been
used to describe the fundamental meaning of
a "Nation". Essentially, a nation consists of a
group of people who are control­led
by a certain rule and govern­ment-
no matter how that rule
was established, and no matter
what the actual interests of the power may be.
The mistaken conception of the ethnic entity,
founded on intangible qualities of blood, and
held together by some other mystical similari­ties,
are beliefs that modern science has dis­proved
and discarded. The argument that these
"dead ideas" are over and above political power
has always been the source of energy for a
grotesque growth of nationalism. When we
finally obtain the courage to maintain human
harmony and co-operation from the basis of a
living, vital and urgent motive, a healthy, in­spiring
Canadian unity will then emerge.
Strangely enough, the radical parties in Can­ada
and in the United States have also shown
strong tendencies to listen to the grave-mind.
No real attempt to localize, or "Canadianize",
the ideals of the early leaders has been made. 4
V. F. Calverton' notes this very accurately
when he says: "Marxism evolved in the mind
of Marx, as well as his followers, out of the
throes of European society. It was a product of
European fact, of European economic condi­tions
and as such functioned as a dynamic social
force. In the U.S., on the contrary, Marxists
failed to make ani significant headway for
three reasons: first because its general proposi­tion
of the class struggle and the increasing
misery of the pro1eteriat do not apply in the
sense that they did in Europe; secondly, be­cause
the metaphysical> nature of its dialectic
with its pyramidal triads are alien to the
empiricistic, pramgatic nature of the Ameri­can
mind; and thirdly, because with few excep­tions,
the Marxians have been unable to, or
uninterested in Americanizing the Marxian ap­proach".
Without exception the same criticism
can be levelled at the Canadian leftist party.
Related to this theory presented by Calver­ton,
we have in Canada a bewildering lack of
unity between the various radical parties. The
absence of a truly Canadian motive, and a
sound Canadian spirit, prevents true assimila­tion
and amalgamation.
Another latent factor contributing to the de­ficiency
of Canada's unity has been the in­different
and casual attitude assigned to educa­tion.
There is no planned internal education,
and the external enlightenment and propa­ganda
is usually puerile and inadequate. Only
recently, during our last war-bond drive, a
movie-short was made in Hollywood (and I
imagine with the. co-operation of Canadian
officials) for the purpose of urging our citizens
to procure bonds. In this "short" a new1y­wedded
couple swagger into a ticket office and
after the boisterous exchange of pleasantries
with the salesman, the happy groom booms out,
"I want two .tickets to Canada!" Following
this profound remark, the salesman goes into a
polished song and dance about the glories and
wonders of "Canada". We are all painfully
aware how outsiders regard Canada. To the
American we are simply a large, clumsy, un­defined
place,' indiscriminately called "Can­ada".
To the Englishman we are known as
some tool referred to as a "Colony" (of course
') After the Deluge.
2) Making of Society.
Role of
Culture
Problem
of Race
merely in jest). The greater tragedy lies in the
fact that we know little about Canada our­selves.
In this respect the educational deficiencies
become more obvious and the neglect reaches
criminal proportions. The citizens of Manitoba
cannot appreciate the problems of the person
in British Columbia; the citizen of Quebec is.
not quite sure that British Columbia is in
Canada. On a local radio-quiz program the
other day one participant was asked, "Which
Province of Canada is the farthest east?" The
question, worth ten dollars, was muffed!
Many of the Canadian youth are actively in­terested
in reform movements and even re­volutionary
changes; but they have been so
busy looking at fetish symbols, or gazing fond­ly
at Russia, or dreaming of a Promised Land,
that the immediate problem became distorted
and vague.
In the process of building a Canadian unity,
the role of the educational institutions is im­portant
and vital. No party holding power has
ever seen fit to utilize this potent
weapon. Despite all the new faci­lities
available for teaching, de-spite
all the new and prodigious
advancements, the curriculum has only been
modified slightly, and this was done reluctantly.
The wages, the living conditions and the equip­ment
offered to the country schoolmaster are
miserable, and the incentive is lacking. A form
of lethargy has crippled our educational pro­cess.
Linked up closely to the educational field is
the complete ignorance of Canadian cultural
and artistic achievements. The only way a
Canadian artist can gain any recognition is by
reflection from the United States. American
firms, feeling that Canadian Art has some
unique and exploitable value, now and again
encourage the Canadian. After the profits are
considered, the scheme becomes one of "good
neighbor policy". Again, the two traditional
parties have never put forth a plan for the ad­vancement
of Canadian culture. All they have
done Is heckle and fume about raising or lower­ing
the wages of the country school-teacher.
Even when it became a matter of sound politics
and of enhancing international relationships,
the government failed to stimulate more Cana-
5
dian cultural movements. What is worse, they
neglected to assist and publicize the movements
that had already been started.
:This is a problem for the University groups
and its political enthusiasts. Instead of repeat­ing
the well-worn platitudes of the various
parties, they should try to influence all parties
to set up and formulate a definite and workable
plan for the improvement of educational stan­dards
and techniques and they should demand
that assistance and recognition be given to the
people engaged in cultural work. Or does the
cry of "man does not live by bread alone" ap­ply
only to the cynical and callous "profit"
hysteria?
Another great barrier to unity is the great
difficulty of racial differences. To view this
problem in the proper aspect a brief review of
a recent tragedy will serve to give
it the proper atmosphere. In the
autumn of 1941, seven hundred
and sixty-nine refugees boarded
the dilapidated cattle-ship the "8S. Struma,"
and with hopeful hearts they cheered as they
left the cruel, barbaric grip of the Nazis. They
turned this ship out to sea and held their hands·
out for the mercy of modern man. Finally,
after their cries met indifferent refusals they
opened the hatches and all of them perished in
the cold, silent depths.
In this crime, in this deliberate murder per­petrated
by our own selfishness. we have a
complete symbol of the racial problem. Canada
has a chance to assert herself and become a
leader in the eyes of her neighbors. Canada
can set the stage for a new and vibrant society.
But, from all present indications, it seems un­likely
that Canada will assume a role in the
refugee problem. Canada is afraid.
The racial difficulties within Canada are com­plex
and difficult. The problem of refugees
pivots around this-we can "strumanize-we
can intern-we can hold endless discussions.
The dead hand of hate and ignorance, and the
dead hand of stupidity will not leave go for a
moment. The question is one of intelligence,
.and intelligence is an anaemic and undeveloped
human potential. Robert Briffault" gives the
Continued on Page 34)
S) Reasons for Anger.
• LIBERALISM •
•
Gordon Harland
In Religion and Politics
"Religion is often used by exploiting groups as an opiat~ for the people. But religion,
in its genuine nature, is something quite different. It is the integral reaction of man's whole
personality to the Universe in which he is a conscious member, able to feel and reflect
upon himself as a microcosm in which are concentrated the vital currents of the Macrocosm.
Religion is natural in the sense that it his integral expression of human nature. The conflict
of religions is a conflict with human cultural nature ..."
-JOSEPH A. LEIGHTON
OURS is an age of many faiths. Of evanes­cent
faiths that perish as rapidly as the
emphasis of cultures die. Scoffing at values
transcendent in their nature, they lack the
stuff of life which is so much more than
dreams. Because of them the times are out of
joint. For they are faiths which are merely
the creatures of a state of mind born from the
pangs of the death of old and birth of new
civilizations in our day. Ours is an age of many
faiths-but the times are sick for want of faith.
These ephemeral faiths with their disinte­grating
consequences constitute much of that
confused and varied state of mind which J. W.
Krutch has neatly termed "The Modern Tem­per."
Freedom has brought its pangs, its re­sponsibilities
and obligations, and many mod­erns
have become disillusioned with liberalism.
It is the contention of this paper that much of
the cynicism and disillusionment which color
the outlook of the modern are the spawn of a
decadent liberalism. An analysis of some of the
leading features of modern life and the process
by which liberalism has become decadent will,
we believe, reveal this relationship.
One feature of the modern temper is a down­right
effrontery-s-an attitude to be expected in
adolescents perhaps, but hardly to be looked
upon as a virtue in respectable
Modern and brilliant novelists and phil­Flippancy
osophers. It springs from an abun-dant
confidence in Man as the
Master of all things and the only being of
significance in the universe. Which is of course
to say, that man has no ultimate significance,
6
and hence his only course is to look upon his
life as being-to use H. L. Mencken's word­"
amusing." Effrontery has been the result also,
of a negative reaction against what we have so
generally termed Victorian prudery. However,
we have not escaped from the Victorian posi­tion.
The old prudery is certainly gone but in
its place we have merely substituted this mood
of joking flippancy, which, though it professes
to look reality in the face and jest about it, is
just as much a defence against life and an
escape from reality as ever prudery was. Jokes
and flippancy because they seem to advertise
that all is not only well, but exhilaratingly so,
effectively prevent the discussion of topics
which infer a consciousness of the world's deep
unhappiness. What Hamlet said of the fickle
queen might be said of many moderns and much
modern life-that we think they do protest too
much! The person who jokes continually is
protesting a happiness he does not possess, just
because he must pretend to himself, and if pos­sible
to others, that he does possess it. The ef­frontery
of the all too frequent modern, like
the causeless laughter of the neurotic, speaks
eloquently of some inner disharmony.
A related attitude in the modern temper, but
with a somewhat different emphasis, is that
championed by Bertrand Russell, which among
other things owes its popularity to the pseudo­scientific
views of current literature. Russell
cannot find God in such a hostile world as the
one in which we find ourselves. Only a humor­ous
Mephistopheles could have produced it,
and at that, only in a mood of exceptional
deviltry. Man cannot win in life, the most he
Lack of
Idealism
can do is enjoy the fight. The essence of human
superiority rests in his knowledge of his in­evitable
defeat. We may say that Russell has
described the mood of defeatism rather than
expounded a philosophy. He has done both.
He has rationalized and in so doing, fortified
and entrenched the cynical mood by which so
many "emancipated" moderns have been en­slaved.
A natural result of the effrontery and defeat­ism
which we have been describing is of course
disillusionment. And disillusionment is the
word that best describes the predominant note
of our era. Walter Lippmann has said that
what most distinguishes our generation is not
our rebellion against the religion and moral
code of our parents as much as our disillusion­ment
with our rebellion. Who can forget his
searching phrases? "Brave and brilliant young
atheists who have defied the Methodist God
and become very nervous." "Young men and
women who are world weary at twenty-two."
"Crowds enfranchised by the blood of heroes
who cannot be persuaded to take an interest in
their own destiny." Does it not all add up to
this: that the rationalist liberalism which has
predominated the thinking of us 'broadminded'
moderns has lacked the stamina which comes
from a dynamic religious philosophy which
sees this universe and all life within it as being
pregnant with the purpose of a moral God?
The stabbing accusation that religious thinking
is wishful thinking has too often been merely
a disguise for the discouraged thinking of cyni­cal
disillusionment.
Atheistic humanism champions an unreserv­edly
naturalistic view of the world and thus
involves a complete rejection not only of super­naturalism
but also of all forms of
idealism. An idealist would claim
that moral and religious values
are grounded in the nature of the
universe, and this humanism will not allow.
Obviously, one of the major assumptions of
.. humanistic thought is that science is the only
dependable guide to truth. But science deals
mainly with structure and not with purpose.
And the fact that our religious impulses cannot
be satisfied with anything less than a belief that
life has a transcendental significance has been
justified rather than shattered by the scientific
7
results of the last two decades. Perhaps this
will aid in explaining the fact that the younger
generation of humanists possess more of a
readiness to affirm the co-operation of the
cosmic aspect. Since the humanists lay heavy
stress on the scientific method, they are most
desirous of following wherever that method
may lead them. Likewise, being humanists,
they make much of human values, but contrary
to the case with the scientific method, the sig­nificance
of human values must be limited to
the human. WHY? The scientific method is
as man-made as is moral theory, but the instant
we seek to construe the Power back of the
universe in moral terms he tells us to limit the
significance of morality to the human. What is
the reason, we ask, for this squeamishness of
the humanists toward the question as to the
moral nature of the back-lying reality? It is on
this question of the objectivity of values that
there is no squaring of liberal Christianity with
humanism. -
Under such captions as effrontery, cynicism,
defeatism, and humanism we have discussed
some of the features of modern life which have
been in some measure at least, the spawn of a
decadent liberalism. For liberalism has become
decadent in the process by which it has wrested
itself from the Christian metaphysic which
alone can give it the dynamic necessary for the
realization of the spiritual values and obliga­tions
which the liberal view demands. Since
all thinking proceeds upon the basis of assump­tions
which are themselves incapable of demon­strative
proof, and since liberalism, whether in
religion or in politics, is the most spiritually
demanding order of life ever proposed, it is
imperative that liberals must base their think­ing
upon assumptions which affirm not only
life but also the intent of life.
Walter Lippmann sees the modern dilemma
as consisting of the fact that it is impossible for
us to reconstruct an enduring orthodoxy and
impossible to live well without the satisfactions
which an orthodoxy would provide. However,
because liberalism has within it the seeds of
an orthodoxy which will never be outmoded,
we believe that a regenerated liberalism is the
only answer to the human dilemma.
Liberal Christianity is orthodox in the sense
that fundamentally its view of the nature of
Historic
View of
Liberalism
the universe and of man and of man's relation
to the totality of things is one with the views
of the prophets, of Jesus, and of the Christian
church at its best.
We believe, because of the accumulated re­sult
of the religious genius of the Hebrew peo­ple
as consummated in. the person of Christ,
thatourthinking Ii),ust proceed on the assump­tion
that the universe' is affirmation. That the
forces of good are more deeply seated in reality
than the forces of evil. In other words, that
there is that in nature which is conserving and
making for the values which we humans cher­ish.
Because of our basic assumption that the
universe is affirmation we are able to establish
the objectivity of values and the consequent
validity of knowledge. Increased knowledge
operating out from and upon our philosophy
can thus deepen our understanding of the na­ture
of life. Two other great features of our
faith stem from this view of the world.
A noble ethic is the imperative of our reli­gion.
Transformation of the individual and of
his social environment so that men and women
can attain unto a realization of these values in
life is, as we see it, the intent of the totality of
things. "This is a world with the whole of
which man may be in co-operation and com­munion,
a world in which the human experi­ence
may be seen as meaningful.?' The liberal
Christian's view of the world is one which puts
elevated meaning into life and which in turn
demands an ennobled way of living it. It is also
a source of power. Our faith that the spiritual
forces of life are real; that they are grounded
in the nature of things, has always proved to
be the greatest fountain of spiritual power at
which the souls of men have taken drink.
It remains for us to see our liberal faith in
the light of its history. For the essentials of
liberalism are deeply rooted in the past. Con­sequently
any liberal view which
tends to di~count a study and
understanding of the past is un­worthy
of the name because it is
an attempt to wrest itself from
the very roots which have given it its life. The
challenging, liberating and transforming word
which is the note of vital liberalism was spoken
with moving passion by the Hebrew prophets.
8
It may be objected that the Hebrew prophets
with their limited universe and their compara­capable
of giving guidance to the emancipated
tively primitive social structure, are utterly in­and
sophisticated modern. It is true that they
were not equipped with the science of logic nor
the tools of empiricism. They were not "intel­lectuals,"
but it most certainly can be shown
'that they maintained a high standard of intel­lectual
integrity. This same integration is what
numerous modern intellectuals have lost, be­cause
they have so often dissipated their ener­gies
in toying with ideas instead of allowing a
great idea to grasp them. To spurn the value
of the Hebrew prophets on the basis that they
lived in an ancient time and consequently did
their thinking in outmoded categories is just
as nonsensical as to discard the insights of
Shakespeare because he conceived the universe
in terms of Ptolemaic astronomy and undoubt­edly
believed in ghosts! In spite of the limita­tions
of their age, the Hebrew prophets held a
view of the nature of reality and of the funda­mentals
of the moral life which our effete and
tired Western culture must imbibe or be over­come
by an impending barbarism.
The prophet did not know the vastness of
the world in which he was living but he was
most certain that it was a moral world. When­ever
the prophet spoke, he did so out of a pro­found
conviction that the world had back of it
a rational and a moral intent. His God was not
one who acted out of whim and caprice but who
was bound by moral law. This is the signifi­cance
of the covenant-the Lord could be de­pended
upon to keep an agrgeement.
The great aim of the prophets was to keep
religion ethical, to hold religion and morality
together. Their achievements undoubtedly
were the result of a worthy view of a moral
God, which' in no small way was the conse­quence
of a worthy view of man. McConnell
expressed it clearly and with fulness when he
wrote, "The burden of the prophetic message
is that God is moral, that human morality if
followed out leads to the knowledge of God and
(Continued on Page 35)
') Graham, W. C.: The Prophets and Israel's Culture.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1934, p. 49. '
MARY TURNBULL
A paper scuffing edge-ily along a dirt-grey pavement­JUKE
BOX NOCTURNE
Jigging into doorways,
Whisking,
Frisking_
Gracefully grotesque
In whimsical burlesque.
Neons winking wolfishly,
Shocking,
Mocking_
Cheerful, idiotic-,­Probably
neurotic..
Bright orange monster,
Trundling
Discordantly;
Furious,_
Fanatic,.
With over-tone chromatic
Of high sharp singing that trails away in sparks.
\ 9
How fantastic of me
And-did he ever love me?
But by the stars above me,
Why blatantly
Embellish
A mood so what-the-hell-ish
With comment
Superfluous,
Ridiculously
Ludicrous?
Oh modern panegyrics,
That might be classed as lyrics!
In bunches we shall purchase them
And take our change in matches.
And
there
are­Districts
residential­Respectable,
Essential;
Where shadows reach their gaunt lengths
Fleeing
Weakly
Over lawns, obliquely,
In panic, from the street lights.
Experience soul-shattering
But never really mattering,
Sardonic,
Ironic-
An interlude moronic.
80-
Sublimated,
Syncopated;
Romance,perchance?
But absurd-
You haven't heard ...
Juke-box paradox
Juke-box
Paradox
It'.
Juke-boxey
P&rBdoxey •.•
THERE.
10
Pillars of Gold • • •
John H. Howes
WRITERS should weave a spider-net of de-light,
they say. Complications grate and
distract. I have heard them say this; put them
in my position and we should see. No parti­cular
delight moves me now. The situation is
this: my leg is lying on the ground over there.
I find I can steady myself to it if I am brutal.
If I could trust my faculties I would say it was
becoming discolored. But I 'cannot; so it mas
very well be my imagination.
Perhaps a writer should pad the broken
rocks; but, except for certain stirrings seven
or eight years ago, frantic stirrings born of an
intangible feeling or strength in the progressive
desolation of my!elf, born of a sharp realization
that bread factories one day a week, extra
gangs at two-bits an hour, filthy houses, patron­izing
hostels, badgering in the booming gold
mines, that these might be the structure of
stomach-living but of nothing else,-except for
the short, warm, indulgent days of my rebel­lion,
I was not a writer. I had no proof that
I was; and since I was not, I excuse myself from
any spider-net weaving. But make no mistake.
In my own mind great panoramas were con­quered,
even though I realized that one man's
mind must be given to others if it is to have
vital significance. Yet, on paper or not, in print
or not, to myself I was a writer and the greatest
writer that ever lived. My fancies were diverse,
my reactions at once subtle and complex, my
insight incisive, my thinking troubled and per­haps
interesting; and I was a reader. If this
had not happened I would be reading now,
reading from the high sand cliffs and watch­ing
the sun bury itself in our lake, instead of
rather vaguely feeling the damp of this even­ing.
I have no use for their tricks. Contrivance
and urgency are poor companions, and I am
urgent, though I wish by all that is just that
11 u
I was not. From the first word it is a story to
my first audience, whose existence I must take
on faith. It is an audience of all those I have
lived with, curious people who delve and pry
and dissect, stupid people who stumble through
their lives and the pious who lend them the
crutches of their barren strength before they
lose themselves in piety. Fools with all their
wisdom, buffoons with their pathos, the wise
with their merriment, the great with their un­derstanding
are all in my audience. One man
is sufficient for he is a compound of his fellows
and includes them all. If they hear this in 1944,
it will be a hungry audience, hungering for
what I have hungered all my .life. Hunger
makes the mind savage. They would not dare
deny a man an audience now. If it has been
listening, it has already heard much of this
story of mine.
No tricks. I have never pretended to the
slick counterpoint of words or the harsh con­ventional
harmony of a five-piece water-front
honky-tonk piece of writing. N9r the snorings
of upholstered velvet bags of words; dead with
drowsy rowlonomourrings and nebulambour­rahs
(with a soft a soft a soft a). Nor horizontal
wakefulness, vertical boredom and sixty-five
degree drunkenness. I feel I must hurry. If
what I say is confusing, it is only because things
crowd upon me or pain stabs away reason.
There was a time when I was well-fed and
I suppose I was juicy-looking, like a freshly
baked apple with three or four black and tan
cloves sucking at the shiny bellies where the
juice had run down. Now I have nothing, not
a nickel to my name, and more than my skin
is sallow. That is the past; accept it as such.
I can hear the future: one does not starve in
these days of social security talk, one just does
not starve; but one has a hell of a time not
starving when he has no food . . .
And more about deception. Once, it seems
long ago, I lived on the Saskatchewan plains;
that was the drought year, remember, when
the land itself rose against a sun that did not
seem to care about us somehow. We approach­ed
a cluster of sagging gray buildings, leaning
on one another and set upon land rolled out
flat and barren. They danced up and down in
the heat before our eyes. A spray of grass­hoppers
rose before us at every step and fell
like pebbles on the hard earthen yard of the
deserted farm. The grasshoppers covered
everything like a layer of brown snow and the
sun seemed to make them crackle. My city­eyes
wide, I carelessly stepped on a board in
the yard that summer of that terrible year.
The hoppers hid nails sticking from the board.
One nail penetrated my foot, not deep, but I
felt a pop and tore off my shoe. The wound
did not bleed. The nail was so hot it had cau­terized
the raw flesh. The real deception was
a gold sheet of wheat stretching far away on
that same farm, a mirage really; everything
was there but the kernels which had decep­tively
changed into black rust-eaten pieces of
waste, specks of dust held upon pillars of
gold ...
. . . having just dined, I feel much better,
especially since it was a good meal. Do not ask
where I got the money. I had to eat. The fat
Russian and the spry little Ukrainian (he said
he was fifty-seven and had had them of every
nationality in the world) were good company,
although one of them, which one I forget, had
the disconcerting habit of foaming slightly
about the mouth after the soup course. They
were hungry also, but differently. The eating
place was quite the most luxurious in the city,
on Portage Avenue I believe, with fine, well­appointed
marble tables set in long rows of
booths. And that word is warm and full in
my memory also. I once knew a family called
Booth in which there were slightly more or
less than eight children: The father, a large,
bluff sort of man, was a great lover of choral
music, particularly Handel's Oratorios. He had
four records beginning to look ragged like
well-used books, but he could afford no more.
He was a man of fine taste, with something of
the showman about him. It was not enough for
him to hear the music. He must see, must 12
create some semblance of the spectacle; he
would line his children in two rows, the little
pink ones in front, still smiling, and the older,
grayer ones behind. He demanded absolute
silence until he had turned on the music. Then
he would stand before them, his hair short­cropped
as though it has been cut by sheep,
and lead them with a furious agitation of his
arms, shaking his head and body as the music
rose and fell. The children would stand shriek­ing,
half in terror, their voices rising louder
with his emotion and sending a fantastic child­ish
cacaphony through the house, the old
gramophone wheezing forth. the music all the
while. Rows of Booths.
No, I am not juicy-looking now. Always
morose, a little too impatient, too much mqsel],
I never was what you would call a warm, satis­fying
person. The fat Russian, an enormous
fellow, he with whom I dined, looked well-fed,
smug and a little soft, like those you might have
observed in the Heights. That was a personal
prejudice of his, the Heights. He said they are
all well-fed-Iooking and smug and perhaps a
little soft like himself, not men with ideals, he
said loudly, pronouncing the word 'idails', and
jerking his head until his chins joggled like a
cow's udder. No one should shrink from being
well-fed looking. I found out later that the
Russian was a man of some wealth, though he
had made a rash vow upon the death of his wife,
never to indulge himself unduly. Being a man
of conscience, and feeling some awe in the
death of a person he loved, he was continually .
troubled after the most minor of his excesses
and could not bring himself to enjoy his
money. He often said, with feeling, that his
wife's death had been a tragedy. I sometimes
took this for one of his strange jokes but never
after I saw him weep over the telling of one
of the happy events with her in his youth.
I feel that I have had a spiritual cauterizing
in my life at sometime or another, or I would
not talk like this and think about it recurrently
as I do. But, if I am not presumptuous, I have
found that tragedies sink away and hurts bury
themselves easily in the years. And this is
probably the great disappointment of life, that
even the deepest things are evanescent. What
a shattering thing it is, to believe that. When
you do realize it you never have the same con­cern
with personal tragedy. I am afraid that
when you know that and have felt it your per­ception
is dulled. You become objective and
to a certain extent invulnerable. It does seem
to me that I have had a tragedy at sometime or
another, but I cannot recall it. And that un­nerves
me. Or is it that I have never felt deep
sorrow. That unnerves me more.
But I can remember the Booths and their
music-loving father and particularly well I can
picture one of the daughters, tall and dark and
vivacious, with a small mole on her left side
just above the hip, like a small island in a white
foam sea. Yes, she and I used to roam the
moors like Catherine and I suppose our hands
would reach through windows in the night and
our voices would haunt the bleak little cottages.
Her name I forget. It is just as well, for per­haps
it is with her my tragedy walks as I once
did. They were hardly moors, but we called
them moors and that is what they were. If
things are what they are by measurement of
the eye, it is like measuring time by clocks.
This is a woman, a young woman with rather
heavy legs and unruly hair and this is five
minutes, something less than three hundred
ticks of a magnificently efficient machine. Yet
those five minutes seemed a day and that
matchless woman was a goddess. I am sure. Of
course she was and those moments were every
bit a day, and the next five minutes may be a
second. And the next woman may only be a
woman with rather unruly hair and a small
mole on the side of her body just above, or
below the hip.
I will not deny that I have felt a certain zest
in it all, often in merely being alive. I will not
deny a certain beauty in breathing, in the
shuddering movement of legs, or the open
stride, in the quick snap and sparkle of fingers,
in the telling flash of eyes. Beauty is where
you find it, sometimes quietly in the silent
burning of elm leaves, sometimes in the verve
of shimmering willows, sometimes in the heavy
vulgarity of delicious profanity, more often in
the white snows of mental witchery and in the
simplicity of understanding. Even when he
starves, when a man knows he is walking
through great balloons of dough that open be­fore
him leaving a hollow path for him to fol­low,
even then the miracle of movement places
a grin on his spirit and he curses the bastards
for letting him starve. He may search the
13
world for knowledge and tear out his eyes be­cause
he cannot see. He may open his heart
and find none will enter. He may close it and
find it overflowing. Through it all stalks a
strange beauty. A soft naked body is a
sepulchre and two naked bodies are a monu­ment;
a truly naked soul will move mountains
and sound the boundless.
These are things I have known. They are
small things. I have been seeking something
great but I have not found it. I have been
frenzied with the emptiness of open life and
stifled by the hypocrisy of enclosed life. I have
sent my own spirits rocketing with a sudden
insight and plunged them shattered with a
query. And yet I have felt a certain beauty
through this . . .
. . . so I have just dined with my goddess
and yet, the fat Russian with the jowls and
the blue-veined lips was there and someone
else also. 0 what a meal that was! Two great
brown roasted turkeys steaming before the
carver and candles lit around the table, every­one
sitting quietly in repressed excitement, and
great glass bowls of maroon and red cranberries
before us all. And when we had pushed back
our chairs expansively with much grunting
and groans and other noises, the wine was
brought in and, though I was young at the
time, I am sorry to say I became quite drunk
amid the laughter of everyone.
Even now I can almost laugh at that. I can't
be, but I am. Chuckling at least. Perhaps it is
impossible, but I am chuckling, almost as if I
were not conscious of pain or sorrow or con­scious
that that is my leg over there several
yards from here, wherever that is, wherever
any place 'is now, and place on the map, here,
there, anywhere, Winnipeg, Regina, Exira.
Whimsey with a bitter edge might finish me.
But I do think all this should have a better
theme. I should be carrying a secret despatch
on which the success of the campaign depends,
and I should feel the anguish of failure and
then perhaps berate myself brutally and die
with someone or other's name 'burbling with
the blood from my lips'. Then my faithful dog
should seek me out and lament my death with
howls drowned only by the opening barrage of
the ill-fated campaign. I would feel more a
human then, more like Gary Cooper with clip­ped
speech and noble heart.
HAROLD KARR HAR0L 0'-11< A R R
XXXIV.
A special: Shakespeare play for fifteen cents-
With indexed notes. The clerk wore glasses, looked
as if she hadn't tasted moon, or brooked
night-shadows on the sky since tenements
became a fad. "Reduced a second time
for clearance"-cleaning out Euripides,
Rossetti, Boswell's "Life," Blake's prophecies­Her
pale eyes challenged me, only a dime,
deploying left and right as to escape
her eyes i mean. may i help, sir? the voice
was silk ... 0 lord canst thou help in this vice?
a headshake and from deep unciphered cup
of grace a smile ... then dazed retreat past zones
where gods in worsteds pressed for magazines.
XXXV.
the greatest poet is at home to us,
the perfect host, waiting for you and i
through all eternity. the ages try
his patience, and all scoffers (without fuss)
are shown the door and asked to wait in hell.
of course it would be scandalous to deign
laurels to all (that is-some would complain)
so the most tortured wights are asked to dwell
close to the muse in order of their zeal.
they say the greats are somewhat aged; i mean
swinburne still wears gloves and jonson's keen
on classics, but they've mellowed quite a deal.
wait . . . and be calm. now let us pray: "The sonnet
is a fixed form of life in length and rhyme ..."
14
A Survey of Canadian Politics
H. Goldenberg
-ROBERT BRIFFAULT in "Reasons for Anger"
A disillusion is the shock we feel when experience informs us that we have been fools,
and teaches us to be wiser than we were before. When men learned that the earth was not
the centre of the universe, they lamented for a hundred years over the disillusion and the
humiliation ... The human race is now entering upon a new phase of its growth. It is
being compelled by bitter painful experience to learn that such a growth cannot take
place in the individual human being without taking into account the social whole of
which he is a product-and a part-he is human, a partaker in the powers of humanity, by
virtue only of the social organism ...
Basic
View of
Politics
THE war has undeniably served to accelerate
the social and political consciousness of the
Canadian people in general, and the Canadian
youth in particular. Many incorrect impres­sions,
however, have been formed by the novice
in his mistaken attempt to interpret political
events and developments by correlating daily
superficial changes.
The confusing shifting political scene and the
contradictory actions of the existing political
parties can be understood only on examination
of the basic underlying economic factors.
The essential economic element that is the
principal motivating force in politics is the
rationalization of privately owned machinery.
By rationalization is meant the
process of the introduction of
more efficient machinery by the
enterprising owners of our re­sources,
natural and industrial, in
order to compete with and supersede their
rivals. Thus we see the development of two
tendencies, on the one hand, a progressive in­crease
of production until it has reached the
point where not only does it exceed the de­mand
of the home country (composed of a
large number of unemployed and semi-em­ployed)
but also exceeds the demand of the
world at large, and on the other hand a pro­gressive
decrease of the number of workers
required. Thus there are fewer consumers to
absorb the greater quantity of commodities
placed on the market.
15
To prevent complete chaos the owners of
our factories deliberately curtail production
since a scarcity of commodities brings higher
prices. Curtailed production or higher prices,
however, prevents the poor from obtaining all
the necessities they need, with the result that
we have a large dissatisfied element within the
country. This dissatisfaction and restlessness
of the people is greatly increased when a boom
or an optimistic tendency permeates our in­dustries
and we have a sudden increase in pro­duction
in the anticipation of a great demand.
Since each individual industrialist knows not
when to cease production-the anarchic char­acter
of our present system-we soon have a
great surplus of goods which cannot be ab­sorbed
by the people who have insufficient
money. This results in what is known as a
"crash" or depression. Commodities fall in
value, smaller factories close, and great num­bers
of workers are dismissed. It is only when
this picture is kept in mind that we can pro­perly
understand the role of political parties.
The Liberal and Conservative parties at one
time played an important historical role in an
epoch radically different from this one. Their
avowed purpose is to maintain the
Status Quo status quo. While expressing a
Parties willingness to permit minor
changes both old parties are
are agreed that the institution of private own­ership
of resources must remain intact. For
this reason it can be understood why these
Cause of
Chaos
parties are composed of and enjoy the support
of our wealthy industrialists. The objection
that the Liberal and Conservative parties may
contain real differences of policy is unfounded.
At one time, an important difference was the
question of Free Trade. At present, both part­ies
have lowered and raised tariffs wherever it
was found expedient. The Conservative party
bitterly criticizes the Liberal party's war effort,
yet no constructive alternative is put forth.
Thus it can be seen that any differences that
may exist are negligible. A change from a
Liberal to a Conservative 'government would
be in the nature of a palace revolution, a
change of personalities but nothing more.
One great example exists of an attempt
made to modify the present system while re­taining
the basic framework; this was the New
Deal in the U.S., introduced by President
Roosevelt. The attempt was far from success­ful.
An analysis of the situation will show why.
Any attempt to bring prosperity to a country
existing under a system such as ours, means
primarily that owners of private enterprises
(businesses) must show a profit. This does not
mean that there are no unemployed, for prior
to 1929-a period of great prosperity in the
U.S.-there were actually millions unemploy­ed,
and in direct proportion, the situation was
similar in Canada. Prosperity means therefore
simply business profits where concerns owned
by private individuals are showing surpluses.
Roosevelt obtained .a temporary superficial
prosperity by what is known as "pump prim­ing,"
loaning sums of money to enterprises to
build and produce. Millions of the unemployed
were put to work on relief projects under the
W.P.A. These projects were deliberately or­ganized
to make USe of as little' machinery and
as much hand labour as possible, since other­wise
the work would have proceeded too
quickly. Another characteristic of this type
of remedy was that the work done by the un­employed
was a type of work which did not
compete with private business because this
would have taken away part of the profit from
private enterprise. The result of this situation
16 ta
was temporary inflation since everybody sud­denly
had money with which to buy goods.
Prices leaped sky high. Machines
started working at top speed. Had
the war not appeared, the im-mediate
ability of the machines to
produce in excess of the demand and their
tendency to do so would have again created
chaos and a much more terrible depression
because the productive potential of machines
had greatly increased. From economics we can
see the reaction upon politics. Roosevelt was
forced to dispense with the services of his so­called
radical brain trust. The Supreme Court
declared the N.R.A. unconstitutional. Finally
his Republican opposition became so powerful
that he was forced to embody them within his
own group. Even this would have failed miser­ably
to rectify the impending disorder had not
the war appeared to take up the slack and
save Roosevelt from the consequence of his
own actions. Very recently Roosevelt, the great
reformer, pronounced the New Deal officially
dead. Thus we see that one of the most radical
steps of one of the status quo parties resulted in
almost complete failure, for the essential
nature of the system, private enterprise, had
been left intact.
In our system there is the one essential­private
property, private ownership. You may
modify it somewhat by giving relief to un­employed
workers, subsidies to manufacturers,
but its dynamic tendencies, if suppressed, will
only explode with greater violence in the end.
In opposition to the Liberal and Conservative
parties and also in opposition to one another
are the so-called radical parties-Social Credit,
C.C.F., and Labour Progressive or Communist
party.
The Social Credit party is based upon an un­sound
and inflationary monetary policy. It is
regretted that the space allotted in this article
does not permit the writer to go beyond this
simple assertion as to its shortcomings. But the
fact that all economists of the various opposing
political groups support this assertion may
exert some influence as to its truth.
The C.C.F. party, which is historically known
as the Socialist party, believes that modifica­tions
of our present system are insufficient,
that a complete change must be effected; that
Progressive
Party
Plans
Common
Aim
the ownership of enterprises and resources
must be taken out of the hands of individuals
and turned- over to the government which will
regulate production to the needs of the people
and not for profits. The C.C.F. believes that
Socialism can be achieved by using the exist­ing
institutions of parliament and voting. Since
this party embodies many groups of diverse
opinions regarding the exact method of ob­taining
Socialism, ranging' from pacifists to
militant Socialists, this divergence of opinion
may be considered as constituting its greatest
weakness: the chance of disunity in the event
of an emergency. Emergencies will undoubted­ly
arise. Should the C.C.F. actually become a
powerful threat to the other contending parties
or even gain power, those who feel they have
most to lose with the disappearance of private
property may rally their forces of press, radio
and screen, as they are doing now, to create
confusion and disunity and finally rise in vio­lent
opposition against the Socialists. This has
been again and again demonstrated in Spain,
Germany, France and Italy. Opposition of this
nature will require constant unity on the part
of the C.C.F. Should the C.C.F. decide to re­sist
and do so in military fashion if the occa­sion
arises they will then be essentially the
same as the Communist party. Should the
C.C.F., however, because of the confusion
created by its disunity retire when it sees its
opposition girding for the battle, as the Social­ist
party did under Ramsay McDonald in Great
Britain, the C.C.F. will then assume the role
of a status quo party in that it will be purely
reformist. Only actions on the part of the
C.C.F. will demonstrate the nature of the party.
A reformist tendency has been recently dis­played
by the C.C.F. national leader, Coldwell,
who stated that the aims of the C.C.F. were
similar to that of the British Labor party.
The Labour Progressive party, which is an
expression of a tactical manoeuvre of the Com­munist
party, will therefore be referred to as
the Communist party. The Com­munist
party is almost military
in its organization, having a
strictly disciplined hierarchy. It
has a complete historical, economical and phil­osophical
background. Life has been inter­preted
as being a struggle. This is expressed
philosophically by Karl Marx and Friedrich 17
Engels in 'Dialectical Materialism,' economical­ly
in 'Das Kapital' and historically by the class
struggle. The final end of this party is similar
to that of the Socialists, the elimination of pri­vate
ownership of our great resources. Since,
however, the Communists have analysed the
situation and concluded that a struggle is al­most
inevitable in obtaining power,. its entire
structure and outlook Is violently opposed to
that of the C.C.F. Its entire composition has
been arranged in the nature of a weapon which
can strike quickly and efficiently when the op­portunity
arises. As decisive action requires a
unity of outlook, the Communists permit very
little variation in beliefs, and consequently has
a numerically small number of adherents when
compared to the other parties.
The relationship between the Communist
party and Russia is simply that Communists
believe that Soviet Russia is a truly workers'
country, ruled by 'workers for the workers.
They believe that interests of common people
of the world are identical with the interests of
.Russia and thus feel that Russia must be pro­tected
not only for the safety of Russia but for
the safety of workers throughout the world.
For this reason the action of the Communist
party is qualified, naturally, by the workers of
Soviet Russia.
All parties today have a common aim, the de­struction
of Fascism. To the status quo parties,
the destruction of Fascism means an oppor­tunity
to return to things as they
were. To the C.C.F., who have
continued politics as usual, the de-struction
of Fascism is an oppor­tunity
to obtain power in order to institute
something acceptable to its various groups as
Socialism. To the Communist party, who has
submerged its present struggle against the
status quo parties in order to proceed more
efficiently with the war, the destruction of Fas­cism
is an opportunity to make a positive bid
for Communism as the free enterprise world
continues to rend itself in internecine strife for
profits.
It is obvious that an article of this nature
cannot hope to deal adequately with any of the
paints brought up but can only touch upon the
(Continued on page 33)
"-
(
/1
I r r
.~
I
Souvenirs • • •
Yes, summer was lovely in the Bois
And perhaps the Sauterne might be a little sweeter
And the tiny bookstalls by the embankment with the eighteenth century
prints
No, never shopped for perfume. Was there a place?
And then Orleans
Sole frite?
Ah, always Le Quartier in the autumn, with the dust and the art students
-there was a little cafe on the St. Germain where the sole was delightful
Really?
And those flabby people who insisted on the Expo-Paris was too bour­geois
that year, too bourgeois
I was so ashamed, I was a mere child, and they always answered me in
English
Yes, interesting, isn't it?
An Algerian peddler, all over goatskins
And of course the taxis, no one could ever forget the taxis
Burgundy? 1h~nk you 18
Ann Phelps
An interesting face
Pity he sat just there, I can't see him now
Perhaps not so interesting really, that uniform always lends distinction
A little Hapsburg? Yes, perhaps.
Really?
But then one never knows
No, not seen the new Chileno with the odd technique
A genius? Possibly
Maddening, these things one only partly comprehends
But then, a certain crudity, so fresh, so almost delicate
Still, frightfully banal at times, these new departures
With the sweet Semitic profile? Yes
How interesting
He sings, you say?
Enchanting, voice like yellow satin
Really?
I was very young and very sick, and I sat up in bed and did sums in francs
and centimes until I fell asleep
A grim old concierge?
Oh, naturally
And a little shop down the street that sold bitter chocolate for eight
sous
Yes, Rue Jacob
But too, too many of the usual things
Queer sized grey paper I've seen nowhere else. Buff backed? You know
it? Of course, Reginaud's
I still have a pencil-stub-how silly of me
Then that horrid wine, like dirty vinegar
And I loved the creamy gendarmes in the summer. Yes and their little
capes. Did you see a negro? Of course, one always does
And then Les Elysees
Cigaret? 'Ci bien.
19
Ab-Normalities in College A6-Normalities
Students ...
College
Professor A. R. Cragg
YOUR EDITOR has asked for a sketch of a
few College types of ab-normalities around
our halls. Has he doubts about the sanity of
the present generation? Is he seeking a free
psychoanalysis? Is he having difficulties with
his Vox staff? Does he voice a public suspicion
of students, particularly in Arts? Might he be a
scientific student of human nature? Or, as
editors do, has he reached the stage when he
thinks everyone a bit queer but thee and me?
The ab-normal College student is not a dif­ferent
kind of human being; he is simply one
who is attempting to solve the more serious
problems of life but is doing so in an undesir­able
or inefficient fashion; he seeks for the same
ultimate goals and the same pleasures as does
the normal person, but he searches in the
wrong directions, and he searches inefficiently,
Accordingly, we shall define the adjustment of
a person as the characteristic way in which he
perceives, reacts to, and solves the main prob­lems
of life; for various reasons, certain of
these adjustments are considered poor or in­efficient
or abnormal. This paragraph should
steady you as critics in your judgment of others.
Psychology is not a short cut to happiness
in any of these cases. It is merely a guide-post
pointing out the long, rocky road that leads up­hill
to character and self-fulfillment by self­sacrifice
and discipline. Some people would
call it common sense. For these cases, common
sense was not common. For obvious reasons,
these are pre-war students. Do you know some
like them?
Helen was an older member of a class with
great desires to get an education but with no
20 2.0
energy to attend regularly or do her home­work
satisfactorily. Her own diagnosis reveal­ed
nerve depletion. Her doctor agreed. That
should be final. Extra-curricular activities
were, note well, helping her sister all her spare
hours in a grocery store, and singing in a choir
that demanded 100% faithfulness. There is al­ways
many a Helen (and Harry) carrying loads
of everything else but the courses on the regis­tration
card. Cure: surgery.
Margaret was the most natively smart girl I
ever knew. She literally leaned. out of the seat
to pay attention. She could sing like a lark but
was too lazy to practise on the piano. She knew
all the mediocre answers necessary to satisfy
teachers but would never look up the hard ones
in a book. She could have been an A plus; she
was a B minus. Through a long, painful pro­cess,
she is coming uphill by Edison's three
secrets of success: 1st, work; 2nd, work; 3rd,
work. There are no others even for the bright
ones. Psychoanalysis is strong on this finding.
It has no short cuts nor magic solutions.
Hugh was a genius. Unlike some geniuses
reported to be around these halls every year,
he knew thoroughly and worked at expertly
one accomplishment. When asked why should
a person like him need a general education, he
replied: Learn one thing as perfectly as you
can; and as many other things as you have
time and energy and liking for, and use them
all for your own satisfaction and in the service
of others. If that is true, there are some ab­geniuses
around. Cure: balance.
Legion was converted three times from he
didn't know what to he didn't know what.
(Continued on page 33)
. Biology Surveys Mankind.
Bradford Henderson
AS MORE knowledge is accumulated, the
application of biology to human affairs be­comes
more and more pertinent. Human in­genuity
has solved many of the intricacies of
nature. The old "theories" are rapidly being
replaced by observable facts. In the broad
2,000-year sweep from Aristotle to the present,
the biologist can now declare that he perceives,
at least, some order in the realm of life.
The biologist admits, however, that in the
understanding of "mind" the scientific method
has progressed no further than Galvani did in
the realm of electricity or Vesalius in' anatomy.
The greatest problem of all, how to control a
mind, shaped and moulded in the cave age,
remains essentially unsolved. In this respect
the Faradays and Newtons of psychology are
yet to come. Our factual knowledge of the
mind may be immense, but our fundamental
understanding .is meagre. A magic formulae
will most likely never be discovered, and the
only method which seems likely to succeed is
a careful inter-correlation of all knowledge,
and a patient concentration on the ultimate aim
-the happiness of mankind.
Continuity of the Germ Plasm
The way of advance in truth is essentially
the same as the way of advance in existing life.
Of two alternatives, the one most logical re­mains.
Thus a geocentric theory of the universe
was overshadowed by the doctrine of Coperni­cus.
We see this process at work in contem­porary
theories of the biological position of
man.
The dualists contend that mind is suddenly
injected into matter at a certain phylogenical
stage; that is, at the level of "man." Another
view asserts that there is no point in the order
of life at which one can say "there mind exists,"
just as there is no point in the infinite gradua-
21
tions of matter from the virus to the visible
cell, from the cell to man, when "life" sud­denly
becomes manifest. There is an utter and
absolute continuity between the thinking and
feeling man, the feotus, the developing ov.um,
and his pre-amoebic ancestors. An identity
of element, ~ot only physiological, but
instinctual and perceptual, runs boldly
throughout the whole kingdom of life. This
identity of process, whether it be in the cell
of a fern, a protozoa, a dog's muscle, or the
human brain is so easily observable and so·
obviously true that men have had to realize
the "thread" which connects all living things.
It is explainable only upon assuming the con­tinuity
of the. central factor-the germ plasm
or protoplasm-throughout all living things.
Nature has assured this continuity by having
all living things born or arising out of other
living things. To the' biologist, an understand­ing
of this fundamental law is of great import­ance
in his understanding of men's mentality.
The continuity of the germ plasm, while ap­parent
in reproduction, is subject to the laws
of variation. It is not an absolute constant. In
the protozoan animaliculae we see a shuffling
of the chromosomes and cell division in every
200 generations. Obviously there is some im­mutable
change in the protoplasmic contents
which needs to be regulated. But the essential
process of life goes on, as far as we are con­cerned,
exactly as before. The theory of the
continuity of the germ plasm may never be
proved, but it is the most acceptable to us in
our study of life. To the biologist it is a
theory as important as the Copernican theory
is to the astronomer.
Relation of Man to Man
While belief in the continuity of the germ
plasm may upset some dogmas, it substitutes
a much more positive and practical dialectic.
We have become accustomed to an anthro­pocentric
view of the universe which is entirely
out of order with the observed facts. The
intricate adaptations of the' insect world to
environment alone should dispel this view.
The emergence of the adult butterfly from the
pupa case is a work of ingenuity which far
surpasses the birth of a human. In this instance
the pupa case forms a matrix or a mold, into
which the insect grows, and its removal without
strain or fracture, is a miracle which everyone
should watch. In other respects also, the insects
. have adapted themselves better than man to
environment. The mosquito has developed a
remarkable means of obtaining sustenance and
maintaining reproduction.
Amongst the helminthes, or parasitic worms,
we mention the hookworm, which divides itself
into two generations, one for travelling, the
other for breeding. The breeding worm is like
an insect. It burrows into the skin, enters a
vein, is carried to the heart, the lungs, crawls
up the trachea, down the aesophagus, into the
stomach, and finally settles down as a worm
in the intestine. The Rockefeller Foundation
estimates there are 90,000,000 cases of hook­worm,
and over 1,000,000 people in Egypt alone,
are bedridden through it. For an animal with
such powers of concentration and pure deviltry,
this seems scarcely surprising. Thus we can
see how an English zoologist declares that the
great battle' of the future will be man vs, in­sects,
and he does not wish to prophesy the
outcome.
Through these things we see the essential re­lativity
of man to nature. He is indeed "a one"
biologically, and not a being apart. He is sub­ject
to the ordinary hazards of life. He must
take his chances like every other living being
in the process of evolution and mutation. By
immutable laws of heredity he receives not
only the color of his eyes from his forefathers,
but also varied instincts and processes from
his cro-magnon and pre-human ancestors.
Regardless of his poor adaptation, when com­pared
to the insects, man is undoubtedly the
highest product of organic evolution to date.
With such anatomical handicaps, we wonder
how this can be so? The biologist replies that
man's evolution has gone beyond anatomical
perfection. It has included two more vitally
22
important things (1) Perfection of the nervous
organization and 'development of the power
of reason; (2) The element of mutual aid, or
ethical values, which 'has acted as a catalyst in
his mental and social development.
We can easily see how the anatomical per­fection
of evolution runs into blind alleys.
Once the horse has developed one toe instead
of five, it can go no further. In this respect
the one-toed ungulates have reached perfection.
In the parasite Balharzia we see an absolute
economy of effort in reproduction by a simple
development whereby the male is actually
carried parasitically inside the female! This
is also true of some tropical fish where the
male is attached permanently to the side of
the female.
The pachyderms (elephants) have developed
to the limit of efficient size. The malaria
plasmodium which is able to live in the blood
cell and breed in the mosquito gut has achiev­ed
perfection in its smallness.
All of these things are essentially adaptive
responses by living beings. Mankind, however,
has responded to the need for adaptation by
mental development. In this respect there is
no limit to his evolution, and no blind alleys
to run into.
However, the factor of "himself" now enters
evolutionary perfection. We agree that great
progress has been made in the last 5,000 years
since the earliest recorded history, and most of
us regard it as evolutionary in being. However,
5,000 years represents only 175 generations.
During that time, when we consider the esti­mated
30,000,000 generations which preceded
it, no fundamental evolutionary change could
possibly take place. Prof. Hooton' assures us
that the mental capacity of Cro-Magnon man,
was indeed quite comparable to our own. We
are forced to conclude, therefore, that our
evolutionary progress has resulted from inter­change
of ideas and experience, from a mental
altruism, and an objective" rational viewpoint.
That means that we are solely responsible for
our progress; that in it lies all hope of future
evolutionary perfection, and we therefore are
masters of our destiny.
') Apes, Men and Morons.
Influence of the Past
In this respect we could assume that regard­less
of the continuity of the germ plasm back
through countless generations, the individual
"mind" is capable of negating its influence.
However, this negative attitude has been in
vogue ever since the dawn of human intelli­gence,
and so far has produced little but a
plethora of taboos and mores. It would seem
much saner to realize what man's tendencies
are because of the continuity of the germ plasm,
to understand them, and to go on from there
in our attitude to society.
Individually, the power for complete re­pression
of the plasmal instincts is possible.
Repression, we must realize, is a normal func­tion.
In all organisms we see it as the control­ling
negative force which makes concerted
action possible. When stimulated the muscle
fibresact with all their might. Some however,
are repressed-thus a violent strain is not
produced. The nervous system of the lower
orders of invertebrates also acts on' the "all
or none" principle and the whole body moves
at once. In a higher order, such as the mam­malians,
some of the movements are inhibited.
It is this lack of repression which characterizes
some types of insanity. Thus we see that re­pression
is natural-it is a means of adaptation.
Actually therefore, it is the basis of our morals.
We see this process of repression vs. plasma
instinct most strikingly in the death instinct.
In the majority of lower forms there is an
alternation of generations. In the fish-fly, which
is so common on our beaches, the first genera­tion
is a worm. Out of that worm develops
a second generation, a winged insect, which
cannot eat since it has no mouth parts, but
which lives long enough to plant a million
eggs over a large area. It is a characteristic of
the second, or egg-laying generations in all
these forms that they have an instinct for
death. Their period of usefulness expires when
they have reproduced. Nature, at all times,
observes a strict economy.
There are many biologists who regard the
foetus as the first generation and the adult
human the second, or propagative phase. Thus
the death instinct," manifest in recklessness,
suicide, and masoschism is part of the primaeval
instincts we come by through the continuity
23
of the germ plasma. Almost always the process
of repression is powerful enough to overcome
the death instinct. Sometimes it is sublimated
in dangerous sports and dare-devil antics.
Occassionally it obtains mastery, and suicide
is the result.*
Morality an Adaptation?
Through the observation of adaptation in
lower forms we gain an insight into human
processes we had hitherto considered meta­physical.
It is a remarkable fact that adaptive changes
in anatomy usually involve a structure already
present. Thus in the echinoderms we see eyes
supported on exceptionally well developed
eye stalks. If we clip off an eye stalk the animal
will regenerate, not a new eye, but a leg, in
its place. From its anatomical position we can
see that the eye was indeed derived from a
leg.
This, and other comparative adaptive mech­anisms,
lead us to believe that morals, arising
as they do out of thought, which is itself essen­tially
an adaptive function, are modifications of
the will to survive. Man has found that the
killers ingenuity is always greater than the
peaceful defenders. The thief is more acute
than the householder. As Hobbes has said "the
natural state ... is poor, brutish and mean ...
continually at war."
Thus in order to survive, mankind has had
to invent morals. They are an adaptive mea­sure
much the same as thought, or standing
upright. When we understand morals as such
we are able to analyse and apply them with
greater objectivity and reason.
This is .the new "positive" understanding of
the sociosphere which a correlation of all
sciences, including biology, makes possible.
Through it should come revelations of thought
and action similar to the revelations of matter
induced by the scientific method inaugurated
by 'Bacon. /
") New Ways in Psycho-Analysis: Karen Horney.
(*The death instinct is most apparent in the in­sanities.)
We All Do It • •
Ray Atkinson
WE ALL Rationalize!!! You don't believe
me?-Then stay awhile. The simplest de­finition
of Rationalization is the making of ex­cuses
or alibis, defending ourselves fOJ;" doing
or not doing certain things, for taking certain
attitudes or making certain alliances. We drift
along until we are forced to face issues, then we
Rationalize in our defence, or w~ loudly justify
acts we feel instinctively are unjustifiable. A
little more complete definition of Rationaliza­tion
may be: a form of defence in which the in­dividual
gives socially actable reasons for his
behaviour either verbally, by thought or by
action, in making things seem to conform to
social usages, or in explaining away inferiorities.
We rationalize to escape the unpleasantness
of reality; to ignore things that seem to threaten
the well-being or good repute of our happiness,
security, family and friends. Rationalization,
however, is not as rational as the word might
appear, but is an attempt to make conduct ap­pear
sensible and conform with' custom and
social expectancy.
Force of Convention
The real reason for men joining the armed
forces, if they were examined, would contain
reasons far from the socially accepted ones of
patriotism, defence of home and country, to get
a chance to smack the enemy, family tradition,
to make the world safe for Democracy, etc.
While the above reasons are the ones most
often given verbally, there are a host of others
more important to the individual, some he
won't even admit to himself. A few of these
might be: the excitement of a new experience,
the chance to learn a trade, social disapproval
if he doesn't join, social acceptance after the
war, travel, friends in the army, unhappy mari­tal
or unhappy home conditions, escape from
debt, more money, chance to make contacts
with girls, escaping from being an individual
and letting others do his thinking, wanting
24
to fly a plane or drive a tank with its accom­panying
sense of power, and so on. However,
these real reasons or motives, of mastery, social
approval and sex are not ordinarily owned or
recognized. Convention has come to regard
these important drives as inferior or blame­worthy,
not acknowledged in polite society or
even by the individual himself, who has be­come
conditioned by that society.
Place in History
The whole history of the world has been
changed in this last decade by Rationalization.
Journalists, statesmen, authors like Van Loon
and Van Rassen and even Hitler himself, warn­ed
us of this present holocaust; but countries,
politicians and individuals all rationalized, con­vinced
themselves that things so terrible could­n't
happen or that they were secure in the
shadow of national, natural or treaty barriers.
They dubbed the prophets as radicals and
alarmists and promptly forgot about it or ex­plained
their depravity. Faced with the reality
of Italy's Ethiopian conquest and the occupa­tion
of the Saar Valley, they still rationalized­"
just local disturbances,"-"Europe is always
squabbling." Then when Hitler "forced them
into war" they naively registered surprise that
such a thing could be possible. How could such
an upstart affect them? They were indignant.
Then started the frantic struggle to face the
reality of handling this upstart that they had
allowed to grow up. They blamed their politi­cians
for not preparing, for not disarming
Germany, for not supporting the League of
Nations, - a hundred and one things were
blamed. The policy of the United States with
reference to her policy of isolation and her un­expected
assault at Pearl Harbor are parallel.
Not Isolationists but blindfolded Rationaliza­tionists.
University professors are caught tight
in the net of Rationalization of their own weav-
(Continued on page 34)
Mary McFarlane
New Song
What is this strange new song
Sung from the land
With a blending of many voices
And a weaving of many airs
Into the one inspiration?
I hear in that deep-throated voice
An echo of wine-land and roses;
But here a man cries out harsh
In the agony of remembrance;
A woman's voice trembles with passion
Yet ever grows softer and sweeter;
And listen-a child sings forth
Without fear and in happiness.
A memory, a hope-a new melody:
The voice of a young people,
The song of a new land.
•
Slum Child
How can you teach me life,
More than this book or this master?
You are not learned or old, .
You are not Christ.
Yet-strange that I read of a cross
And still know nothing of sorrow,
Except as I see you smile
As you crawl back into your cell.
What use that I speak of pain
As something my body has known,
When I see your twisted hand
And your swollen twisted foot?
What do books know of anguish,
Of hopelessness, or soul-longing;
What do men know of death
Who have not looked in your eye&?
I was wrong.
You are learned and old;
25 And perhaps you are Christ.
Inside Canada
Ross Woodman
THE PRAIRIE BOY had gone down to the
sea and frowned at rugged bits of coastline,
and mountain tops, cold, silent, and dumb.
Now he was going home, back to his prairie
vision stretched outright like slumber. He had
seen things that were not in geography books,
or postcards, or the sighs of spring ladies re­turning
from a winter's retreat in the Empress.
He had felt a new kind of immensity, too gro­tesque
for beauty, out of human proportion,
lost in clouds and to imagination.
Past midnight, the train wound its way
through the Fraser Canyon, the coaches trail­ing
behind like a paper streamer in the twilight
wind. The color was gone, and the Fraser that
looked, by daylight, like a petrified stream (if
such there could be) was lost in mountain
blackness. By moonlight, the engine could be
seen twisting its way into denser mountains.
It reminded him of a nightmare he had had
while sleeping in the Caribou country. He had
dreamt of giants, moon radiant,' wrenching
themselves free from the earth and shooting
skyward with rock security. As .the train
darted among the mountains those giants were
rising again now in front and forever just be­hind.
The whistle of the engine rebounded
from the rock like shaking laughter. And
somewhere beyond this were the prairies with
their lifting horizons, waiting like dawn on the
other side of the world.
Canada had grown foreign to him that sum­mer,
the way a thing that grows too suddenly
and take on new and startling shapes becomes
foreign. His Canada had been the prairies, the
thing he knew and felt profoundly. Outside of
Calgary he had seen the mountains settled like
clouds, and he knew that ahead of him was
something that could belong to another world.
It was as though the prairies had awakened
from their slumber, and stood upright, pulling
26
up p. whole country by the roots. And in that
imagined upheaval there grew a people, subtle,
shallow, and loudly generous. Yet they were
also Canada's people.
Sitting in the daycoach, seeing about him
tired people resting upon each other, he knew
that these were Canada's strangers, strangers
both to themselves and to each other. He knew
that Canada was immensely big, a selfish land
of barren rock. He knew also that her people
would not all fit together about the kitchen
stove of a prairie farm. These Vancouver peo­ple
waited for the green signal before crossing
the street, and they talked far too much from
their Southern neighbors. On their faces was
stamped the imprint of a half dozen generations
of nobodys. These were the nomads of Canada,
people that had moved West for a hundred
faithless reasons. It was these people that talk­edCanada
right out of existence. To the prairie
boy they were people on the other side of the
mountain with a first loyalty to American tour­ists.
He had found a new Canada tailor-made for
sight-seeing tours. It had not the prairie gran­deur
that is seen only with long looking; that
comes thought-shaped into the mind, not in a
beaten path to the outlook. A prairie follows the
far-sighted course of the eye, and because it is
obvious you miss it. In the mountains you look
up a little to one side to get the proper per­spective.
In the prairies you don't do anything.
It's all about you, and you just look. Prairies
'are horizontal; it is a beauty of space, the kind
that has to do with the spirit of a man.
He had felt Canada grow that summer, and
seen its possibilities. They were possibilities
cut out by nature, that would keep Canada for­ever
a land of community interests. But 'out of
the different pulses of her people, the multi-
(Continued on page 33)
0 MOODS 00 S ...
IN HIS IMAGE ...
I caught a fly
and with indifferent cruelty
I tore off its wings
and grew happy as I saw
it creep and struggle
then I saw it turn and twist
and spin around in hopeless circles
and look at me with reverence and horror
and I knew at once
that I was a God ...
•
I WALK ALONE
and admire
the energy of the wind as it sighs along the
street
and twirls through torn papers and rude dust
stirring the wrinkled yellow dried leaves
and caressing the naked trees
I walk alone and wonder
at the joy of the wind
playing with the dead.
•
I saw the weaving helpless line
of hungry tired people
tramping from unkind lands
to places unknown
I saw their weariness •
and despair
and their questioning wet eyes
as they moved in weavy snail-like fashion
carrying pathetic wrinkled bundles and scraps
of what was once home and comfort
young and old slogging away from hate
young and old stumbling and crying and
wondering
men and women crawling broken with weari­ness
but the trembling giddy line crept on
to undefined unknown hopes.
27
A. C. Green
Lora Cantor
Impressions of Saroyan Impressions o~ Saroyan ...
SIMPLICITY is the keynote to the appeal of
William Saroyan as a story-teller. There is
not involved stage-setting and conscious at­tempt
at atmosphere production.. Saroyan ob­tains
his required emotional effects by writing
about ordinary people-about "kids, bums,
drunkards, gamblers, fools, homeless men, tra­vellers,
lonely men, Filipinos, Armenians, Rus­sians
and himself". These need no introduction
because the reader already knows them. Per­haps
he is just trying to remind you that you
know them.
There is a thread of idealism in Saroyan's
portrayal of people. He writes of them as he
would like them to be-as he thinks they
ought to be. If there is a wistfulness, it is be­cause
of a knowledge that there are few who
will ever be like that, and because of the utter
loneliness of the few who are. It may even be
that it is for those few that he writes.
There are many who have begun to see
William Saroyan as a symbol-a symbol of
youth striving for expression of beauty in
beauty of expression. We have even dared to
dream that we have been looking the same way
and at the same things as Saroyan.
Spenser has been presented to us as one
whose beauty and profundity of expression may
delight us today. One might read through and
about Spenser and find lacking that certain
vital warmth that is inherent in Saroyan. Or
compare Saroyan with the great psychologist
of human drama, Shakespeare. It is difficult to
say that William Saroyan is a lesser psycholo­gist
of human drama. The difference lies in the
emphasis. Shakespeare knew the weaknesses
of man and their effect upon him. He portrays
a man with a weakness. Through some acci­dent
of living this weakness is brought to the
fore and is fed. It grows and becomes more
28 28
than a small human weakness--it becomes an
obsession larger than the man himself. Mac­beth
spoke of having "only vaulting ambition
which o'erleaps itself". We must remember
that Shakespeare wrote for the audiences and
players of his day and something strong, stir­ring,
perhaps exaggerated appealed to them.
Saroyan is strong-he is stirring. But rather
than exciting you, he touches a familiar chord
within you. There are weaknesses in his char­acters
but they are there simply as a necessary
part of a man. Without them, he would be not
quite human; with them over-emphasized, he
would be perhaps even less human. There are
minor characters in the plays of Shakespeare
who are very like the characters found in
Saroyan. But whereas Shakespeare plays them
down and leaves you feeling a little sorry for
them because they are nice, ordinary human
beings, Saroyan takes these for his chief actors
and projects himself into them.
In all of Saroyan's writings you find one or
more persons in whom Saroyan has implanted
the essence of himself. You will discover in
them a certain knowledgable but not a cynical
wisdom. These meet other persons who are
lost and fumbling in misshapen ideas and bring
to them the warmth of humanity and feeling
of togetherness that Saroyan would like to
bring to the whole world of human beings. It
is an appeal to you to look at the world and
love it as he does and there is a beauty in the
very way he seems to rest assured that you too
can do this.
His play, "Hello Out There," is based on this.
It is the story of a young man who has been
imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of rape.
There is a girl who cooks for the prison. Not a
beautiful girl, to us, nor even a pretty one, but
(Continued on Page 33)
Jack Borland
COUNTRY ROAD
Summer 1943
She is an old woman, and she wears a babushka.
Even though I only see her back, I know that
there are wrinkles in her face, and that the
skin of her face is brown like leather is brown
and soft like a mellow peach is soft.
She walks with bent back, slowly swaying a
little, and I swiftly overtake her on the country
road in the morning sunlight.
My brass buttons shine in the morning sun­light,
for the road is not yet dusty, and the dew
still twinkles in the thick grass which grows by
the side of the road.
Because she looks so old, I feel young; because
she is so weak, I am strong. She is old and
weak, I am young and strong, therefore do I
address her as grandmother.
Hello, grandmother, I say.
Hello, my son, she says, only it is in Ukrainian.
I walk slowly beside her and say, It will be
hot today, grandmother.
She nods her head and sighs.
We walk on and pass a cow grazing among
poplar trees. An old truck charges past us
toward the city, and a little trail of dust spreads
and covers the dew on the grass by the side of
the road.
I say, It will be very dusty, too.
She nods her head and sighs.
We pass a man who ploughs -his field; the sun
rises higher, and the breeze becomes warm,
29
though it does not raise the dust. Presently I
learn that she has a son in the Air Force. He
is an officer, and a good boy. He looks like me,
she says.
I say that that is very nice to know.
She looks down at the road again On the side
of the road there is a boulder with Christ
Saves Sinners painted on it In big red letters.
Now and then she nods her head and. sighs.
Perhaps she is thinking of her officer son in
the Air Force overseas.
We come to a little farm. There is a house
made of mud, but you cannot tell it is mud
because it is whitewashed and even if it is
mud it looks very clean just the same. But
the barn is very close to the house.
She turns in the road to the farmhouse and
says, Good morning, my son, and I say good
morning, grandmother, only she says Good
morning, my son in Ukrainian.
She walks into the farmhouse, I walk up the
road, and presently another truck passes me.
This time the dust rises higher and covers my
shining buttons.
By the time I reach Birds Hill the sun is high
and hot on my neck. I climb the hill, and then'
descend..Looking over my shoulder, I watch
the little mud house hide behind the hill. First
the white mud walls, then the roof, then the
chimney, and then the empty sky.
I
To Be or Not to Be . . .
Peter Gordon White
United -- Macalester Conference Con~erence
goes through severe introspection
EXPECTANCY, excited greetings beside the
train just pulled in, flashbulbs. luggage,
overloaded and gasoline-rationed cars, first­night
re-unions, luncheons, banquets, and dec­orated
college halls-the thrill of the social side
of the now much-lauded International Student
Conference was as great as ever. It was still
as much fun to welcome "Americans," and
grasp eagerly at anything they might do or say
that might reveal how they were "different,"
and they still seemed to tingle at the idea of
"coming up North."
It wasn't that the novelty was beginning to
wear off, and it wasn't because students no
longer welcomed the refreshing change from
the lecture method to Knowledge in holiday
dress, that out of the Conference itself should
rise the question: Does this thing make ;:tny
real contribution to students who are seeking,
if not the answers, at least an understanding of
the problems of our own day?
Value Discussed
The question was there in the Conference
even before it was voiced in the closing plenary
session. It slipped into the discussion groups,
and the perceiving few became aware of it. It
was found in the little threesomes and four­somes
where the best thinking is unhampered
by self-consciousness or the necessity of
30
making an impression. The deeper the thought,
the more accurate the facts, the more pressing
did the question become: Was there any use in
talking at all, or were we deliberately shutting
our eyes to the fact that what we did or said or
thought wasn't going to make the slightest bit
of difference anyway, that we were as impotent
as a blind horse harnessed to a mill-stone,
vaguely aware that we were the source of the
power, yet having no control over its uses or
our own course?
There were those who objected to such think­ing.
To them it is pessimistic, bad for public
relations, and, to say the least, is hardly cricket
after a great deal of effort has been taken to
arrange a nice conference.
Nothing could be wider of the mark.
The three-year-old Conference-baby never
showed a healthier sign than when it began re­flecting
on itself, its function in the scheme of
things, and its relationship to the world about
it. That it dared to carry the self-examination
to the point of yes or no on the matter of future
conferences is a display of intellectual integrity
of which the original sponsors and promoters
of the conference-idea might well be proud.
Strange Coincidence
Perhaps this introspective twist of the third
year of our interchange with Macalester is a
natural and logical stage in development. At
any rate, it is a strange coincidence that, un-
known to each other, both faculty members and
student delegates should be discussing the same
question. What is significant, however, is that
both should arrive at the same answer. In effect
it amounts to a re-affirmation of the belief that
in a democracy the things that 'the Common
Man is saying and doing and thinking are im­portant.
In that belief lies the strength and weakness
of our democratic system, the glory and the
shame of it, the source of all its most inspiring
triumphs and its most sickening weaknesses in
the realm of social justice, and in the story of
man's long struggle not only for existence but
for ther fullest self-realization of himself as a
rational human being.
There are those who seem to believe that
these conferences serve no purpose unless the
participants are the future leaders who are go­ing
to be in "power" (as they understand
power) . If that is true, then we may indeed
stop fooling ourselves about our "high serious­ness"
and call the Conference our International
Tea Dance, for, even though a former editor of
"Vox" has pointed out that one of last year's
United delegation has since become Premier
of the Province, we might as well recognize
that the majority of us will never sit in Parlia­ment,
or govern our biggest universities, or
preach from the most influential pulpit. Some
of us might not even be successful, as the world
judges success.
Final Analysis.
But does that mean that all our thinking here,
all our lectures, all our discussions, have been
but a useless waste of time? I don't think so.
After all, what is it, in the final analysis, that
is the great determining factor in shaping the
life of a community or a nation? It is the ever­moving
dynamic of the thought of the masses
which surges up from the life of the common
man to become articulate in the exceptional
man. Who claims any longer that Hitler be­came
the object of fanatical worship because
he succeeded in fooling the German people?
On the contrary, it was because he was the
very incarnation of their embryonic and inade­quately
expressed thoughts that he rose to a
height that both baffled and terrified the non­Germanic
world. Why did Churchill, whose
31
past record leaves so much to be desired in
matters of wisdom and judgment, find himself
with a solid and united nation under his leader­ship?
Because in the face of almost inevitable
defeat, with appeasement and peace lying in
ruins like their cathedrals, this man was the
voice and the agent for the thoughts of the
millions.
When the day comes that the purpose which
lies behind the United-Macalester Conference
is vain, and all similar projects, the countless
debating societies and discussion groups and
study circles and forums are but silly little
shams to give the "masses" a sense of power
without really changing things at all, then no
military victories will matter, for we will have
abandoned the very essence of what we are
supposedly fighting for: a society in which the
intrinsic worth of the individual is recognized,
a system in which his voice is heard, and a
world in which he may be proud to live.
The third Conference covered a lot of ground.
Some of our speakers were loaded with block­busters,
and more than one ofthem hit square­lyon
the target. The student leadership from
both colleges had something to say and knew
how to say it. The discussion was eager, even
if not rosily optimistic-some of the post-war
problems discussed led to anything but en­couraging
conclusions. But the most significant
event of this third year was our appraisal of
ourselves. The time may come when such soul­searching
is again in order, but until then we
re-form ranks and
"... Take up arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them."
Like a "Battle
Bowler"
a Savings Ac­count
is great
protection when
the going is hard­est.
Start saving
now.
THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA
EFFORT • •
Winifred Polson
( p
-,
Now at this hour sleeps reason at the gates,
And slow and slow the ghosts come drifting in,
In to the passive stillness. Never was yet the grape
That ripened as desired; the rot within
Spoke through the bloom; or hidden among shades
Its unripe presence green affronted Time.
With sour, few drops the impatient earth is laved,
Its fall unseasonable mourned but by the vine.
See too the landward-striding breakers strive
With lacy crests and sonorous bellow deep
To shake the roots of that far misty cliff.
With ravening howl they charge the granite steep,
Leaving, with thunderous crash, tumultuous roar,
A little foam on an indifferent shore.
Bowl Your Way to Health
6 BOWLING ALLEYS
6 BILLIARD TABLES
Fluorescent
Lighting
MAKE THE
Y.M.C.A.
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at the
Y.M.C.A.
• Make up a mixed
bowling party to­night.
• Form a bowling
league now.
• There is Fun,
Friendship, and
Fellowship at the
"Y."
• Telephone 25 944
for Reservations.
32
The Graduates'
Literary Prize . .
Commencing with'the 1943-44 term a
prize of twenty-five dollars will be
awarded each year for the best creative
writing submitted by an undergraduate
in Arts, Science or Theology at United
College.
Professor Phelps has consented to act in
an advisory capacity and as chairman of
the Board of Judges.
Entries should reach the English De­partment
by March 15, 1944.
For more particulars see the previous
issue of Vox.
The Graduates' Literary Prize has been
inaugurated and will be maintained by
five graduates of the class of '43: Lieut.
Steven Otto, Lieut. Lorne Grainger, Ervin
Petsnick, Victor Gruneau, and John
Howes.
- .~- ..,
Inside Canada . . .
(Continued from Page 26)
plicity of outlook and environment must some­day
arise a nation strong and wise. Canada
would be both because her adolescence is slow
and painful. Someday the unwanted child that
is Canada would want "herself," and out of
natural growth her people would blend.
Quebec will grow to know us, and we to feel
something of the dignity and worth of her way
of life. Quebec cannot help but grow into the
outer Canada. She is doing it now, hesitatingly,
because she is -rightfully suspicious of much
that she sees. Perhaps she is afraid she is grow­ing
into nothing.
In modesty Canada is storing strength of
character, and the dignity of earth. The Tory
east, the American west, the French Quebec,
and the Prairie boy have within themselves the
embryo of a nation when someday they come
home to Canada.
•
Impressions of
Saroyan ..
(Continued from Page 28)
a plain girl who has been ignored, ridiculed and
downtrodden all her seventeen years by the
townspeople, by others her own age, by her
own parasitical father. The young man who,
one might almost say, portrays Saroyan in the
play treats her as another human being like
himself. When he sees her wondering dis­belief
at this, he exhibits a tenderness and
understanding that seems to reach out and en­fold
the reader or audience. The young man is
killed because of other people who have not
learned the simple things, and have only the
confused, involved, crass way of living. But
the girl is not left alone. He has given her
a "self" as a person and an assurance that
there are others like him and like her. Her
last words-the last words in the play-are a
33
sort of shy, tremulous, but confident greeting to
what is now for her a hopeful new world.
This, then, is Saroyan. Not a mysterious en­tity
called "the author", but a real person who
sits beside you as you read and who laughs and
cries and wonders with you at the world and
all the human people in it.
•
Ab-Normalities In
College Students.
(Continued from Page 20)
Psychological conversion is a change of pattern
. .. from what you do not want to what you do
want. It can be done. Legion made no attempt
to change his pattern. There is no guarantee in
psychology for a cure if remedies are not fol­lowed.
So you see abnormalities are just ab-normal.
Three of these cases found their own normal
_way of life. It proved happier and more effi­cient
than the previous ab-normal way. If we
mean by normal the mediocre, the dull, the
routine, ab-normality is preferable. Surely in
College, normality is something superior. Any­thing
less than this is ab-normal.
•
A Survey of Canadian
Politics
(Continued from Page 17)
highlights. An attempt has been made to pre­sent
the material, so that its statements are
self-evident truths, thus precluding the neces­sity
of too much explanation and the added en­cumbrance
of quotations from authorities. If
these words have served to awaken interest
and stimulate the student to look further into
the matter in the search for truth it has served
its purpose.
We All Do It ...
(Continued from Page 24)
ing regarding the war effort and their part in it.
Analyze some of their speeches and side re­marks
concerning the students!
On the Campus
We meet Rationalizationists face to face
around every corner of the University campus.
Students blame all sorts of incidental things
for their being late at class. They learn this
rationalization early in life from their parents.
To some, the real reasons for slight delays are
too accurate, sometimes embarrassing, and a
wonderful escape from reality is provided in
Rationalization. Just think of the reasons peo­ple
concoct for missing a lecture; a thread of
truth is grasped and spun into a net of Rational­ization
that often entangles the poor souls.
This business of Rationalization takes other
illusive forms than those described above. We
see those "sour-grapes" who depreciate things
they are unable to obtain themselves-a student
loses his best girl friend or an election, then
suddenly he didn't care anyway. Or students,
usually the ungifted ones, declaring that be­cause
a girl is beautiful she is dumb or that the
brainy, quick-witted students soon forget. How­ever,
these doctrines of balance have been long
since definitely disproved. They were the ra­tionalization
of parties trying to cover up in­feriorities
in themselves. Then there is the
Common Room "Sweet Lemon"; however
humble his fortune, it is just wht he wanted or
it was all for the best in the long run.
We also have students projecting their un­desirable
characteristics to others. For exam­ple,
a fundamentally dishonest person noticing
all the dishonest acts around him and loudly
proclaiming their depravity, or the chronic crab
and gossip! ! After examinations we find stu­dents
blaming their failures on the conspiracies
of others. Rationalization of the preceding
sometimes shades into delusion if the persecu­tion
is believed avidly enough and no amount
of logical reasoning will break it down.
It should be realized that Rationalization is
a very intricate mechanism used by everybody,
on others and within themselves, as a social
cushion to have other people's feelings, to save
34
their own, and as a substitute for reasoning and
reflective thinking. It is used by all types or
it is used as a mental cushion to ease our con­science
of some terrific responsibility that if
brooded over would send us insane. It is prob­lematical
whether to dub Rationalization as an
evil or a blessing, but whatever you classify it
as, recognize it as a mechanism you use in
every-day life, and being aware of its implica­tions,
use advisedly.
•
Editorial ...
(Continued from Page 5)
answer when he says: "Intelligence, which has
been, and is, crippled by its economic deter­mination,
can be restored to its natural effec­tiveness
and function only by emancipation
from economic interests. The aim of social de­velopment,
the abolition of class rule. is identi­cal
with the aim of intellectual development,
the ABOLITION OF PREJUDICE."
The elusive thread of Canadian unity is
showing little sign of becoming a cohesive,
binding chord. It is kept unattainable by dead
ideologies, by a laissez-faire educational atti­tude,
and by a vicious cycle of intellectual de­ficiency.
"Intelligence cannot operate freely in
one direction while it is habitually deflected
from its function by wish fulfillment in an­other."
In this we have the grief, and the sorrow of
the world ... the very grief and sorrow that if
not cured might easily make Post-World War
Two-Pre-World War Three.
') Reasons for Anger.
For A Superior Haircut
BOULEVARD
BARBER SHOP
FIRST CLASS BARBERS
477 Portage Avenue Phone 37496
(Just West of the Mall Hotel)
LIBERALISM
in Religion and Politics in Relig'ion and Politics
(Continued from Page 8)
that the knowledge of the moral God deepens
the springs of human morality.!"
In all these things it is apparent that the view
of the liberal Christian is essentially that of the
) prophets. And unless he has succumbed en­tirely
to the conventions of formal science, he
will agree that it is the God of Amos and not
the unknown X at the conclusion of a meta­physical
problem, who can save the world. We
must not forget that ours is a great redemptive
religion. And although it is of great value to
be able to explain the world-the role of the
Christian is to overcome the world.
Jesus was much' more than a prophet. He
was more than the dynamo of righteousness,
He was the white heat of love. He was the Son
of God. Nevertheless, He stood in, and was the
consummation of, the prophetic heritage. He
certainly saw life as being full of meaning and
purpose and both of them as personal. Nor did
He ever divorce the religious from the moral.
There was always content in the experiences
of Jesus. It is worth noting that the feeling of
the ineffable, the altogether unutterable is
lacking from the gospel experiences. The su­preme
value of His experiences is depicted in
terms of moral reinforcement.
The basic positions of liberal Christianity
are orthodox. They are such not because of
the hangovers of tradition, but because as far
back as the days of the prophets
Orthodox the whole question of man's na­Liberalism
ture, conduct and relation to God
was grasped and understood. We
look to the past for guidance, not because we
have a Confucian outlook or backlook but be­cause
in our corporate experience we have
gained the principles by which the Future must
be approached, if we are to pass on a richer
heritage than we have received. It is in this
sense that liberalism is in possession of the
seeds of an orthodoxy that will never be out­moded.
35
Just as Barthianism owes its present appeal
to the failures of liberalism in religion, so the
totalitarian state has gained attractive power
because it sprang from the ruins of a decadent
liberalism in politics. "Totalitarianism comes
when liberalism has failed and it comes as a
direct result of this failure.:" Now all political
questions are at bottom theological. For im­plicitly
or explicitly every political system rests
upon some doctrine of man and of the value
and meaning of life. The philosophy of Levia­than,
the totalitarian state, is based upon a
materialistic and despairing view of human
nature. As stated by Hobbes it rests upon the
ideas that man is not by nature, but only by
contract a social being, and that man is not a
spiritual being made for freedom but a mere
engine, for, asks Hobbes, "what is the heart but
a spring; and the nerves but so many strings;
and the joints but so many wheels, giving mo­tion
to the whole body?" Totalitarianism is a
philosophy of despair even when, as in modern
Germany, it has assumed the form of Nietz­schean
romanticism. The philosophy of Rous­seau
although it began with the opposite view
as to the felicity of man in his natural state,
results in the same tyranny, as does that of
Hobbes. For both of them denied that there
were "unwritten laws eternal in the heavens,"
the recognition of which is the only ultimate
basis for political freedom. "Man is by nature
neither the cowed wretch of Hobbes' imagina­tion
nor the blithe and carefree primitive of
Rousseau. W~ are not mere individuals. Our
nature can only. find fulfilment in our families
and in the fellowship of our neighbors and com­panions;
our home is not a mere convenience,
and the organized society in which we find our­selves
is not a mere institution demanding our
obedience or contractual service, but a spiritual
inheritance to which we owe loyalty and love
and sacrifice. So also we are not mere ,ce11s'
in the vast organism of the super-personal
State but ethical and rational beings for whom
the community is both a necessity for physical
life and a fulfilment of a natural and spiritual
need. Hobbes, Rousseau, and their progeny
2) McConnell, F. J.: The Prophetic Ministry. The
.Abingdon Press: 1930, p. 83.
3) Drucker, P. F.: The Future of Industrial Man.
New York: The John Day Co.; 1942, p. 215.
have led us astray because their doctrines of
man are radically false.'"
If it is true that a nation whose philosophy
is based upon a negation of the moral nature
of man leads inevitably to barbarism, then it is
equally true that a civilization that lacks any
articulated philosophy of life is travelling the
road of dissolution. Our present Western civil­ization,
as T. S. Eliot has pointed out, is neither
Christian nor pagan, but neutral-with a Chris­tian
bias. The nadir of a degenerated liberalism
was reached because we lacked an articulated
philosophy of the nature of man and of the
state, made dynamic by the impulse of a reli­gious
conviction. The casual and indifferent
manner with which we have given up our
religious philosophy and the recrudescence of
barbaric systems and beliefs in our time are
but two sides of the same process. I fail to see
any evidence for believing that our cherished
liberal democracy can be maintained save as it
is sustained by the Christian faith passionately
held by the people. For liberalism enters into
the process of decay the moment we approach
our way of life with hedonistic motivations.
Liberalism itself has not failed-it is we who
have failed to understand that the assumption
of our social responsibilities is a matter of
moral obligation and not mere prudence. Ap­peasement
is always the policy of a nation
guided by hedonistic motives. A people whose
actions are not governed by principles which
spring from a worthy view of the nature of God
and man is never capable of recognizing the
arrows of outrageous fortune until they are
securely lodged in their backs!
In our dynamic age, when the greatest social
fact of the time is the rapidity of social change,
we are confronted with a clear choice between
totalitarianism and a regenerated
Imperative liberalism. If it follows that the
Choice choice of the latter becomes an
imperative, then let it be recog­nized
that liberalism must be regenerated at its
roots, in its philosophy. And that the needed
dynamic is to be found in the Christian view
of the nature and intent of life and not in
eternal question marks.
Regeneration of our pattern of life hinges
further on our view of the nature of progress.
Progress has been a household word in our era.
It was the natural result of the evolutionary
36
theory and the simultaneous technological ad­vances
being made in every realm by applied
science. Our belief in progress was further
substantiated by the Spencerian doctrine of in­evitable
progress. Stepping into life was like
stepping on an escalator-we went inevitably
up! But it was a false doctrine. Inevitable
progress is an illusion. The accumulation of
machines and the creation of ever new devices
is too superficial a standard for anything that
is real. Unless we are capable of a correspond­ing
enlargement of our vision and of our spirit,
we are learning today that we will not progress
but retrogress. "The heart of Liberalism," says
Hobhouse, "is the understanding that progress
is not a matter of mechanical contrivance, but
of the liberation of living, spiritual energy?"
We believe that by co-operating with the spirit­ual
forces of the universe, man can more fully
personally and socially embody the forces of
good. That is progress. "I am come not to
destroy but to fill life full." That is progress.
This belief in progress is not based on anything
so fleeting as mechanical achievement but upon
our great historic view of the nature of man,
the nature of God, and the nature of our rela­tionship
to Him. Progress is a matter of moral
decision. And where else but in the Christian
metaphysic do we find a dynamic basis for
moral action?
The modern pulpit, at least, need not strike
any discouraging note. It has been the genius
of our faith that it has been most vital in times
of despair and chaos. Moreover, we are in
possession of a redeeming faith too rich in its
quality to be indulging in a sentimental moral­izing.
The Baals of ancient times have re­appeared
in more sinister guise and the crafty
Mercury has found clever men to rationalize
their appeal. And the mass of men placate the
gods, as of old. The times are sick for the want
of a prophetic ministry-shall the age find the
liberal pulpit wanting? Or shall it be that the
tree of our faith, stripped of its dead branches
by the raging storms of the day, shall grow
again in the springtime rich with foliage, per­forming
the dream of the dead! Per crucem ad
lucem-from the sacrifice flashes forth the
light!
6) Hobhouse, L. T.; Liberalism. Home University
Library: p, 137.
') Micklem, N.: The Theology of Politics. Oxford
University Press: 1941, p. 44.
UNITED
COLLEGE
WINNIPEG, CANADA

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Feb. 1944 (1943-44) II 3. Macalester-U.C. Conference pg 30-31 VOL. XVII No. I WINNIPEG, MAN.
F-.<> - ~ I
A Complete Textbook Service . . .
All books used in the University or Affiliated Colleges are regu­larly
kept in stock at the Book Department. Orders for special
books are given speedy attention.
The Book Department is not a private enterprise; it is owned
and operated directly by the University.
Prices are always the lowest it is possible to make them.
University of Manitoba
BOOK DEPARTMENT
Broadway Bldg., Osborne St.
Three-Piece Suits
of Youthful Distinction
Coat, Vest $rJ8 50 and Trousers ~.
The materials, many of them imported, are high
grade, richly patterned wool worsteds, snappy
tweeds and dressy serges. The tailoring is fully up
to EATON'S exacting standards. In sizes 35 to 44.
Men's Clothing Section,
The Hargrave Shops for Men, Main Floor
~~T. EATON C~MITED
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vox Content8 ••.
PUBLICATION OF UNITED COLLEGE
UNDERGRADUATES
WINNIPEG MAN.
EDITORIAL ;,., ;.,.. ..
A. C. Green
Page
3
Vol. XVII-No.1
Stuff • • •
•
FEBRUARY, 1944
c •
•
LIBERALISM 6
Gordon Harland
JUKE-BOX NOCTURNE . 9
Mary Turnbullll'i~~···:·,···_..··'--:···..·
PILLARS OF GOLD .. ; :....... 11
. c John H. Howes
Editor-in-Chief .................•............. AUBREY C. GREEN
Associate Editor ; _....... . B. HENDERSON
Art Editor' ,.., .- , ANN PHELPS
Business Manager ,,; ,..; ; MEGAN WILLOWS
Honorary Editor:
DR. A. R. M. LOWER
•
Cover . . .
The cover was designed
especially for Vox by
ANN OLSON, a student
in Collegiate. Miss Ol­son,
who says that she
"loves trees" has presented a typical Western Canadian
scene. The grey, beautiful serenity, and the trees
clinging to the sky have been portrayed with sympathy
and feeling.
POEMS 14
Harold Karr
CANADIAN POLITICS .... .e'k•...••;;............................ 15
H. Goldenberg
SOUVENIRS................. 18
Ann Phelps
ABNORMALITIES 20
Prof. A. R. Cragg
BIOLOGY SURVEYS MANKIND 21
B. Henderson
WE ALL DO IT ; ;.; ; , ,....... 24
Ray Atkinson
POEMS .,."...., 26
Mary McFarlane
INSIDE CANADA ,............. 27'
Ross Woodman
MOODS ~
A. C. Green
IMPRESSIONS OF SAROYAN ;.... 28
Lora Cantor
COUNTRY ROAD ,.......................................... 29
Jack Borland
TO BE OR NOT TO BE~ ....jA.~.c........ 3&
P.G.White ~
II I always buy my extra meat from a man at the
back door. I've never even seen a black market! ..
- ..
SWEET CAPORAL CIGARETTES
"The purest form in which tobacco can be smoked"
A. C. Green
Editorial . . .
"It is our human intelligence and our human courage which is on trial; it is incredible
that men who have brought the technique of physical discovery, and use to such perfection
will abdicate in the face of the infinitely more important human problems. What stands in
the way of a planned economy is a lot of OUTWORN TRADITIONS, MOTH-EATEN
SLOGANS AND CATCH-WORDS THAT DO SUBSTITUTIVE DUTY FOR THOUGHT,
AS WELL AS OUR ENTRENCHED PREDATORY SELF-INTERESTS. WE SHALL ONLY
MAKE A REAL BEGINNING IN INTELLIGENT THOUGHT WHEN WE CEASE MOUTH­ING
PLATITUDES . . ."-PROFESSOR JOHN DEWEY.
CANADIAN unity is not just a war-time
problem, expediency, or necessity; it is one
of the essentials for the future growth, progress
and prosperity of Canada. This problem of
unity is an intricate and a complicated one. It
involves the entire range of racial intolerance
and minority prejudice; and it encompasses the
vast field of human stupidity. To some the
solution seems to lie in a strong and militant
nationalism, to others, unity seems possible
only with the formation of a fluid, penetrating
cultural matrix. The majority, just don't care
However, unity itself, cold, enforced and
vigorous, can easily turn into a dangerous, sav­age
potential. It can lead to a destructive and
a restrictive nationalism. The
Dangers of unity achieved within Germany,
Nationalism especially in the pre-war and
early war days, has only receiv­ed
admiration from the decadent and the de­generate.
(It is with fear and shock that we
can recall the many sources of that admira­tion!)
We all remember the loud and vocifer­ous
cries of "-but, you must remember Hitler
is doing a lot for Germany." Yes, Hitler was
doing a lot. The reluctant (but secretly en­thusiastic)
admirers told us that he was re­pairing
the German "inferiority-complex"; and
they showed that he was building and inspiring
a new fervour, instilling new hope into the
3
masses. It is to be hoped that the "masses",
running frantically from the Russians, or
huddling and shivering in crude shelters in
Berlin, are grateful to Hitler and his inspira­tion.
We can feel sure that the tremulous lines
of unhappy refugees appreciate the benefits of
the great new Hitler-complex. This type of
propagated and inculcated national frenzy is a
vivid, and tragic example of what can still be
done with the modern, enlightened, twentieth
century man! Nationalism is a dangerous wea­pon
to tinker with. Inexperienced politicians
and power-hungry groups know well its dyna­mic
qualities and propaganda value. However,
Canada, although not yet a melting pot, is com­posed
of a strange mixture of many races. This
fact, plus the very youth of the country, would
prevent the formation of a strong barbaric
unity.
The cultural and the artistic branches of pro­paganda
are also in too weak a state to be used
with any great success. In spite of all this,
there are manifestations within
The Dead Canada that do suggest a latent
Issues reservoir for a strong nationalistic
party. The frightened minds of
some of our citizens are still clinging to ancient
pillars and symbols. They still have the com­fortable,
misty cobwebs over their eyes and
their hearts. The deficiencies of local traditions
and customs have been supplanted by imported
What Is
a Nation
traditions and imported signals from the dead
hand. Some of the people of Quebec maintain
in a strong and enthusiastic manner the re­stricting
"dead ideas" embodied in the long and
colorful past of their particular ideology. Other
sections of Canada cling desperately to the dead
aspects of imperialism and empire-traditions.
Minority races made sure to bring along their
own ve'rsion~ lind trunk-loads' of dead ideas and
dead issues.
Leonard Woolf' described the influence of
such ideas in a sharp manner when he stated:
". . . the strongest and the most important
factor about communal psychology is that its
content is largely the ideas, the beliefs, and the
aims of the dead. The dead man's hand was
always being stretched out of the grave to con­trol
property, fields and homes. There can be
no understanding of history which does not
take into consideration the diabolic control of
the psychological dead hand, dead mind, the
ghosts of beliefs; ideals which have turned rot­ten
with age, and from which all substance and
meaning has been sapped ... the old is always
stronger than the new; the dead stronger than
the living ..."
Many vague and generalized terms have been
used to describe the fundamental meaning of
a "Nation". Essentially, a nation consists of a
group of people who are control­led
by a certain rule and govern­ment-
no matter how that rule
was established, and no matter
what the actual interests of the power may be.
The mistaken conception of the ethnic entity,
founded on intangible qualities of blood, and
held together by some other mystical similari­ties,
are beliefs that modern science has dis­proved
and discarded. The argument that these
"dead ideas" are over and above political power
has always been the source of energy for a
grotesque growth of nationalism. When we
finally obtain the courage to maintain human
harmony and co-operation from the basis of a
living, vital and urgent motive, a healthy, in­spiring
Canadian unity will then emerge.
Strangely enough, the radical parties in Can­ada
and in the United States have also shown
strong tendencies to listen to the grave-mind.
No real attempt to localize, or "Canadianize",
the ideals of the early leaders has been made. 4
V. F. Calverton' notes this very accurately
when he says: "Marxism evolved in the mind
of Marx, as well as his followers, out of the
throes of European society. It was a product of
European fact, of European economic condi­tions
and as such functioned as a dynamic social
force. In the U.S., on the contrary, Marxists
failed to make ani significant headway for
three reasons: first because its general proposi­tion
of the class struggle and the increasing
misery of the pro1eteriat do not apply in the
sense that they did in Europe; secondly, be­cause
the metaphysical> nature of its dialectic
with its pyramidal triads are alien to the
empiricistic, pramgatic nature of the Ameri­can
mind; and thirdly, because with few excep­tions,
the Marxians have been unable to, or
uninterested in Americanizing the Marxian ap­proach".
Without exception the same criticism
can be levelled at the Canadian leftist party.
Related to this theory presented by Calver­ton,
we have in Canada a bewildering lack of
unity between the various radical parties. The
absence of a truly Canadian motive, and a
sound Canadian spirit, prevents true assimila­tion
and amalgamation.
Another latent factor contributing to the de­ficiency
of Canada's unity has been the in­different
and casual attitude assigned to educa­tion.
There is no planned internal education,
and the external enlightenment and propa­ganda
is usually puerile and inadequate. Only
recently, during our last war-bond drive, a
movie-short was made in Hollywood (and I
imagine with the. co-operation of Canadian
officials) for the purpose of urging our citizens
to procure bonds. In this "short" a new1y­wedded
couple swagger into a ticket office and
after the boisterous exchange of pleasantries
with the salesman, the happy groom booms out,
"I want two .tickets to Canada!" Following
this profound remark, the salesman goes into a
polished song and dance about the glories and
wonders of "Canada". We are all painfully
aware how outsiders regard Canada. To the
American we are simply a large, clumsy, un­defined
place,' indiscriminately called "Can­ada".
To the Englishman we are known as
some tool referred to as a "Colony" (of course
') After the Deluge.
2) Making of Society.
Role of
Culture
Problem
of Race
merely in jest). The greater tragedy lies in the
fact that we know little about Canada our­selves.
In this respect the educational deficiencies
become more obvious and the neglect reaches
criminal proportions. The citizens of Manitoba
cannot appreciate the problems of the person
in British Columbia; the citizen of Quebec is.
not quite sure that British Columbia is in
Canada. On a local radio-quiz program the
other day one participant was asked, "Which
Province of Canada is the farthest east?" The
question, worth ten dollars, was muffed!
Many of the Canadian youth are actively in­terested
in reform movements and even re­volutionary
changes; but they have been so
busy looking at fetish symbols, or gazing fond­ly
at Russia, or dreaming of a Promised Land,
that the immediate problem became distorted
and vague.
In the process of building a Canadian unity,
the role of the educational institutions is im­portant
and vital. No party holding power has
ever seen fit to utilize this potent
weapon. Despite all the new faci­lities
available for teaching, de-spite
all the new and prodigious
advancements, the curriculum has only been
modified slightly, and this was done reluctantly.
The wages, the living conditions and the equip­ment
offered to the country schoolmaster are
miserable, and the incentive is lacking. A form
of lethargy has crippled our educational pro­cess.
Linked up closely to the educational field is
the complete ignorance of Canadian cultural
and artistic achievements. The only way a
Canadian artist can gain any recognition is by
reflection from the United States. American
firms, feeling that Canadian Art has some
unique and exploitable value, now and again
encourage the Canadian. After the profits are
considered, the scheme becomes one of "good
neighbor policy". Again, the two traditional
parties have never put forth a plan for the ad­vancement
of Canadian culture. All they have
done Is heckle and fume about raising or lower­ing
the wages of the country school-teacher.
Even when it became a matter of sound politics
and of enhancing international relationships,
the government failed to stimulate more Cana-
5
dian cultural movements. What is worse, they
neglected to assist and publicize the movements
that had already been started.
:This is a problem for the University groups
and its political enthusiasts. Instead of repeat­ing
the well-worn platitudes of the various
parties, they should try to influence all parties
to set up and formulate a definite and workable
plan for the improvement of educational stan­dards
and techniques and they should demand
that assistance and recognition be given to the
people engaged in cultural work. Or does the
cry of "man does not live by bread alone" ap­ply
only to the cynical and callous "profit"
hysteria?
Another great barrier to unity is the great
difficulty of racial differences. To view this
problem in the proper aspect a brief review of
a recent tragedy will serve to give
it the proper atmosphere. In the
autumn of 1941, seven hundred
and sixty-nine refugees boarded
the dilapidated cattle-ship the "8S. Struma"
and with hopeful hearts they cheered as they
left the cruel, barbaric grip of the Nazis. They
turned this ship out to sea and held their hands·
out for the mercy of modern man. Finally,
after their cries met indifferent refusals they
opened the hatches and all of them perished in
the cold, silent depths.
In this crime, in this deliberate murder per­petrated
by our own selfishness. we have a
complete symbol of the racial problem. Canada
has a chance to assert herself and become a
leader in the eyes of her neighbors. Canada
can set the stage for a new and vibrant society.
But, from all present indications, it seems un­likely
that Canada will assume a role in the
refugee problem. Canada is afraid.
The racial difficulties within Canada are com­plex
and difficult. The problem of refugees
pivots around this-we can "strumanize-we
can intern-we can hold endless discussions.
The dead hand of hate and ignorance, and the
dead hand of stupidity will not leave go for a
moment. The question is one of intelligence,
.and intelligence is an anaemic and undeveloped
human potential. Robert Briffault" gives the
Continued on Page 34)
S) Reasons for Anger.
• LIBERALISM •
•
Gordon Harland
In Religion and Politics
"Religion is often used by exploiting groups as an opiat~ for the people. But religion,
in its genuine nature, is something quite different. It is the integral reaction of man's whole
personality to the Universe in which he is a conscious member, able to feel and reflect
upon himself as a microcosm in which are concentrated the vital currents of the Macrocosm.
Religion is natural in the sense that it his integral expression of human nature. The conflict
of religions is a conflict with human cultural nature ..."
-JOSEPH A. LEIGHTON
OURS is an age of many faiths. Of evanes­cent
faiths that perish as rapidly as the
emphasis of cultures die. Scoffing at values
transcendent in their nature, they lack the
stuff of life which is so much more than
dreams. Because of them the times are out of
joint. For they are faiths which are merely
the creatures of a state of mind born from the
pangs of the death of old and birth of new
civilizations in our day. Ours is an age of many
faiths-but the times are sick for want of faith.
These ephemeral faiths with their disinte­grating
consequences constitute much of that
confused and varied state of mind which J. W.
Krutch has neatly termed "The Modern Tem­per."
Freedom has brought its pangs, its re­sponsibilities
and obligations, and many mod­erns
have become disillusioned with liberalism.
It is the contention of this paper that much of
the cynicism and disillusionment which color
the outlook of the modern are the spawn of a
decadent liberalism. An analysis of some of the
leading features of modern life and the process
by which liberalism has become decadent will,
we believe, reveal this relationship.
One feature of the modern temper is a down­right
effrontery-s-an attitude to be expected in
adolescents perhaps, but hardly to be looked
upon as a virtue in respectable
Modern and brilliant novelists and phil­Flippancy
osophers. It springs from an abun-dant
confidence in Man as the
Master of all things and the only being of
significance in the universe. Which is of course
to say, that man has no ultimate significance,
6
and hence his only course is to look upon his
life as being-to use H. L. Mencken's word­"
amusing." Effrontery has been the result also,
of a negative reaction against what we have so
generally termed Victorian prudery. However,
we have not escaped from the Victorian posi­tion.
The old prudery is certainly gone but in
its place we have merely substituted this mood
of joking flippancy, which, though it professes
to look reality in the face and jest about it, is
just as much a defence against life and an
escape from reality as ever prudery was. Jokes
and flippancy because they seem to advertise
that all is not only well, but exhilaratingly so,
effectively prevent the discussion of topics
which infer a consciousness of the world's deep
unhappiness. What Hamlet said of the fickle
queen might be said of many moderns and much
modern life-that we think they do protest too
much! The person who jokes continually is
protesting a happiness he does not possess, just
because he must pretend to himself, and if pos­sible
to others, that he does possess it. The ef­frontery
of the all too frequent modern, like
the causeless laughter of the neurotic, speaks
eloquently of some inner disharmony.
A related attitude in the modern temper, but
with a somewhat different emphasis, is that
championed by Bertrand Russell, which among
other things owes its popularity to the pseudo­scientific
views of current literature. Russell
cannot find God in such a hostile world as the
one in which we find ourselves. Only a humor­ous
Mephistopheles could have produced it,
and at that, only in a mood of exceptional
deviltry. Man cannot win in life, the most he
Lack of
Idealism
can do is enjoy the fight. The essence of human
superiority rests in his knowledge of his in­evitable
defeat. We may say that Russell has
described the mood of defeatism rather than
expounded a philosophy. He has done both.
He has rationalized and in so doing, fortified
and entrenched the cynical mood by which so
many "emancipated" moderns have been en­slaved.
A natural result of the effrontery and defeat­ism
which we have been describing is of course
disillusionment. And disillusionment is the
word that best describes the predominant note
of our era. Walter Lippmann has said that
what most distinguishes our generation is not
our rebellion against the religion and moral
code of our parents as much as our disillusion­ment
with our rebellion. Who can forget his
searching phrases? "Brave and brilliant young
atheists who have defied the Methodist God
and become very nervous." "Young men and
women who are world weary at twenty-two."
"Crowds enfranchised by the blood of heroes
who cannot be persuaded to take an interest in
their own destiny." Does it not all add up to
this: that the rationalist liberalism which has
predominated the thinking of us 'broadminded'
moderns has lacked the stamina which comes
from a dynamic religious philosophy which
sees this universe and all life within it as being
pregnant with the purpose of a moral God?
The stabbing accusation that religious thinking
is wishful thinking has too often been merely
a disguise for the discouraged thinking of cyni­cal
disillusionment.
Atheistic humanism champions an unreserv­edly
naturalistic view of the world and thus
involves a complete rejection not only of super­naturalism
but also of all forms of
idealism. An idealist would claim
that moral and religious values
are grounded in the nature of the
universe, and this humanism will not allow.
Obviously, one of the major assumptions of
.. humanistic thought is that science is the only
dependable guide to truth. But science deals
mainly with structure and not with purpose.
And the fact that our religious impulses cannot
be satisfied with anything less than a belief that
life has a transcendental significance has been
justified rather than shattered by the scientific
7
results of the last two decades. Perhaps this
will aid in explaining the fact that the younger
generation of humanists possess more of a
readiness to affirm the co-operation of the
cosmic aspect. Since the humanists lay heavy
stress on the scientific method, they are most
desirous of following wherever that method
may lead them. Likewise, being humanists,
they make much of human values, but contrary
to the case with the scientific method, the sig­nificance
of human values must be limited to
the human. WHY? The scientific method is
as man-made as is moral theory, but the instant
we seek to construe the Power back of the
universe in moral terms he tells us to limit the
significance of morality to the human. What is
the reason, we ask, for this squeamishness of
the humanists toward the question as to the
moral nature of the back-lying reality? It is on
this question of the objectivity of values that
there is no squaring of liberal Christianity with
humanism. -
Under such captions as effrontery, cynicism,
defeatism, and humanism we have discussed
some of the features of modern life which have
been in some measure at least, the spawn of a
decadent liberalism. For liberalism has become
decadent in the process by which it has wrested
itself from the Christian metaphysic which
alone can give it the dynamic necessary for the
realization of the spiritual values and obliga­tions
which the liberal view demands. Since
all thinking proceeds upon the basis of assump­tions
which are themselves incapable of demon­strative
proof, and since liberalism, whether in
religion or in politics, is the most spiritually
demanding order of life ever proposed, it is
imperative that liberals must base their think­ing
upon assumptions which affirm not only
life but also the intent of life.
Walter Lippmann sees the modern dilemma
as consisting of the fact that it is impossible for
us to reconstruct an enduring orthodoxy and
impossible to live well without the satisfactions
which an orthodoxy would provide. However,
because liberalism has within it the seeds of
an orthodoxy which will never be outmoded,
we believe that a regenerated liberalism is the
only answer to the human dilemma.
Liberal Christianity is orthodox in the sense
that fundamentally its view of the nature of
Historic
View of
Liberalism
the universe and of man and of man's relation
to the totality of things is one with the views
of the prophets, of Jesus, and of the Christian
church at its best.
We believe, because of the accumulated re­sult
of the religious genius of the Hebrew peo­ple
as consummated in. the person of Christ,
thatourthinking Ii),ust proceed on the assump­tion
that the universe' is affirmation. That the
forces of good are more deeply seated in reality
than the forces of evil. In other words, that
there is that in nature which is conserving and
making for the values which we humans cher­ish.
Because of our basic assumption that the
universe is affirmation we are able to establish
the objectivity of values and the consequent
validity of knowledge. Increased knowledge
operating out from and upon our philosophy
can thus deepen our understanding of the na­ture
of life. Two other great features of our
faith stem from this view of the world.
A noble ethic is the imperative of our reli­gion.
Transformation of the individual and of
his social environment so that men and women
can attain unto a realization of these values in
life is, as we see it, the intent of the totality of
things. "This is a world with the whole of
which man may be in co-operation and com­munion,
a world in which the human experi­ence
may be seen as meaningful.?' The liberal
Christian's view of the world is one which puts
elevated meaning into life and which in turn
demands an ennobled way of living it. It is also
a source of power. Our faith that the spiritual
forces of life are real; that they are grounded
in the nature of things, has always proved to
be the greatest fountain of spiritual power at
which the souls of men have taken drink.
It remains for us to see our liberal faith in
the light of its history. For the essentials of
liberalism are deeply rooted in the past. Con­sequently
any liberal view which
tends to di~count a study and
understanding of the past is un­worthy
of the name because it is
an attempt to wrest itself from
the very roots which have given it its life. The
challenging, liberating and transforming word
which is the note of vital liberalism was spoken
with moving passion by the Hebrew prophets.
8
It may be objected that the Hebrew prophets
with their limited universe and their compara­capable
of giving guidance to the emancipated
tively primitive social structure, are utterly in­and
sophisticated modern. It is true that they
were not equipped with the science of logic nor
the tools of empiricism. They were not "intel­lectuals"
but it most certainly can be shown
'that they maintained a high standard of intel­lectual
integrity. This same integration is what
numerous modern intellectuals have lost, be­cause
they have so often dissipated their ener­gies
in toying with ideas instead of allowing a
great idea to grasp them. To spurn the value
of the Hebrew prophets on the basis that they
lived in an ancient time and consequently did
their thinking in outmoded categories is just
as nonsensical as to discard the insights of
Shakespeare because he conceived the universe
in terms of Ptolemaic astronomy and undoubt­edly
believed in ghosts! In spite of the limita­tions
of their age, the Hebrew prophets held a
view of the nature of reality and of the funda­mentals
of the moral life which our effete and
tired Western culture must imbibe or be over­come
by an impending barbarism.
The prophet did not know the vastness of
the world in which he was living but he was
most certain that it was a moral world. When­ever
the prophet spoke, he did so out of a pro­found
conviction that the world had back of it
a rational and a moral intent. His God was not
one who acted out of whim and caprice but who
was bound by moral law. This is the signifi­cance
of the covenant-the Lord could be de­pended
upon to keep an agrgeement.
The great aim of the prophets was to keep
religion ethical, to hold religion and morality
together. Their achievements undoubtedly
were the result of a worthy view of a moral
God, which' in no small way was the conse­quence
of a worthy view of man. McConnell
expressed it clearly and with fulness when he
wrote, "The burden of the prophetic message
is that God is moral, that human morality if
followed out leads to the knowledge of God and
(Continued on Page 35)
') Graham, W. C.: The Prophets and Israel's Culture.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 1934, p. 49. '
MARY TURNBULL
A paper scuffing edge-ily along a dirt-grey pavement­JUKE
BOX NOCTURNE
Jigging into doorways,
Whisking,
Frisking_
Gracefully grotesque
In whimsical burlesque.
Neons winking wolfishly,
Shocking,
Mocking_
Cheerful, idiotic-,­Probably
neurotic..
Bright orange monster,
Trundling
Discordantly;
Furious,_
Fanatic,.
With over-tone chromatic
Of high sharp singing that trails away in sparks.
\ 9
How fantastic of me
And-did he ever love me?
But by the stars above me,
Why blatantly
Embellish
A mood so what-the-hell-ish
With comment
Superfluous,
Ridiculously
Ludicrous?
Oh modern panegyrics,
That might be classed as lyrics!
In bunches we shall purchase them
And take our change in matches.
And
there
are­Districts
residential­Respectable,
Essential;
Where shadows reach their gaunt lengths
Fleeing
Weakly
Over lawns, obliquely,
In panic, from the street lights.
Experience soul-shattering
But never really mattering,
Sardonic,
Ironic-
An interlude moronic.
80-
Sublimated,
Syncopated;
Romance,perchance?
But absurd-
You haven't heard ...
Juke-box paradox
Juke-box
Paradox
It'.
Juke-boxey
P&rBdoxey •.•
THERE.
10
Pillars of Gold • • •
John H. Howes
WRITERS should weave a spider-net of de-light,
they say. Complications grate and
distract. I have heard them say this; put them
in my position and we should see. No parti­cular
delight moves me now. The situation is
this: my leg is lying on the ground over there.
I find I can steady myself to it if I am brutal.
If I could trust my faculties I would say it was
becoming discolored. But I 'cannot; so it mas
very well be my imagination.
Perhaps a writer should pad the broken
rocks; but, except for certain stirrings seven
or eight years ago, frantic stirrings born of an
intangible feeling or strength in the progressive
desolation of my!elf, born of a sharp realization
that bread factories one day a week, extra
gangs at two-bits an hour, filthy houses, patron­izing
hostels, badgering in the booming gold
mines, that these might be the structure of
stomach-living but of nothing else,-except for
the short, warm, indulgent days of my rebel­lion,
I was not a writer. I had no proof that
I was; and since I was not, I excuse myself from
any spider-net weaving. But make no mistake.
In my own mind great panoramas were con­quered,
even though I realized that one man's
mind must be given to others if it is to have
vital significance. Yet, on paper or not, in print
or not, to myself I was a writer and the greatest
writer that ever lived. My fancies were diverse,
my reactions at once subtle and complex, my
insight incisive, my thinking troubled and per­haps
interesting; and I was a reader. If this
had not happened I would be reading now,
reading from the high sand cliffs and watch­ing
the sun bury itself in our lake, instead of
rather vaguely feeling the damp of this even­ing.
I have no use for their tricks. Contrivance
and urgency are poor companions, and I am
urgent, though I wish by all that is just that
11 u
I was not. From the first word it is a story to
my first audience, whose existence I must take
on faith. It is an audience of all those I have
lived with, curious people who delve and pry
and dissect, stupid people who stumble through
their lives and the pious who lend them the
crutches of their barren strength before they
lose themselves in piety. Fools with all their
wisdom, buffoons with their pathos, the wise
with their merriment, the great with their un­derstanding
are all in my audience. One man
is sufficient for he is a compound of his fellows
and includes them all. If they hear this in 1944,
it will be a hungry audience, hungering for
what I have hungered all my .life. Hunger
makes the mind savage. They would not dare
deny a man an audience now. If it has been
listening, it has already heard much of this
story of mine.
No tricks. I have never pretended to the
slick counterpoint of words or the harsh con­ventional
harmony of a five-piece water-front
honky-tonk piece of writing. N9r the snorings
of upholstered velvet bags of words; dead with
drowsy rowlonomourrings and nebulambour­rahs
(with a soft a soft a soft a). Nor horizontal
wakefulness, vertical boredom and sixty-five
degree drunkenness. I feel I must hurry. If
what I say is confusing, it is only because things
crowd upon me or pain stabs away reason.
There was a time when I was well-fed and
I suppose I was juicy-looking, like a freshly
baked apple with three or four black and tan
cloves sucking at the shiny bellies where the
juice had run down. Now I have nothing, not
a nickel to my name, and more than my skin
is sallow. That is the past; accept it as such.
I can hear the future: one does not starve in
these days of social security talk, one just does
not starve; but one has a hell of a time not
starving when he has no food . . .
And more about deception. Once, it seems
long ago, I lived on the Saskatchewan plains;
that was the drought year, remember, when
the land itself rose against a sun that did not
seem to care about us somehow. We approach­ed
a cluster of sagging gray buildings, leaning
on one another and set upon land rolled out
flat and barren. They danced up and down in
the heat before our eyes. A spray of grass­hoppers
rose before us at every step and fell
like pebbles on the hard earthen yard of the
deserted farm. The grasshoppers covered
everything like a layer of brown snow and the
sun seemed to make them crackle. My city­eyes
wide, I carelessly stepped on a board in
the yard that summer of that terrible year.
The hoppers hid nails sticking from the board.
One nail penetrated my foot, not deep, but I
felt a pop and tore off my shoe. The wound
did not bleed. The nail was so hot it had cau­terized
the raw flesh. The real deception was
a gold sheet of wheat stretching far away on
that same farm, a mirage really; everything
was there but the kernels which had decep­tively
changed into black rust-eaten pieces of
waste, specks of dust held upon pillars of
gold ...
. . . having just dined, I feel much better,
especially since it was a good meal. Do not ask
where I got the money. I had to eat. The fat
Russian and the spry little Ukrainian (he said
he was fifty-seven and had had them of every
nationality in the world) were good company,
although one of them, which one I forget, had
the disconcerting habit of foaming slightly
about the mouth after the soup course. They
were hungry also, but differently. The eating
place was quite the most luxurious in the city,
on Portage Avenue I believe, with fine, well­appointed
marble tables set in long rows of
booths. And that word is warm and full in
my memory also. I once knew a family called
Booth in which there were slightly more or
less than eight children: The father, a large,
bluff sort of man, was a great lover of choral
music, particularly Handel's Oratorios. He had
four records beginning to look ragged like
well-used books, but he could afford no more.
He was a man of fine taste, with something of
the showman about him. It was not enough for
him to hear the music. He must see, must 12
create some semblance of the spectacle; he
would line his children in two rows, the little
pink ones in front, still smiling, and the older,
grayer ones behind. He demanded absolute
silence until he had turned on the music. Then
he would stand before them, his hair short­cropped
as though it has been cut by sheep,
and lead them with a furious agitation of his
arms, shaking his head and body as the music
rose and fell. The children would stand shriek­ing,
half in terror, their voices rising louder
with his emotion and sending a fantastic child­ish
cacaphony through the house, the old
gramophone wheezing forth. the music all the
while. Rows of Booths.
No, I am not juicy-looking now. Always
morose, a little too impatient, too much mqsel],
I never was what you would call a warm, satis­fying
person. The fat Russian, an enormous
fellow, he with whom I dined, looked well-fed,
smug and a little soft, like those you might have
observed in the Heights. That was a personal
prejudice of his, the Heights. He said they are
all well-fed-Iooking and smug and perhaps a
little soft like himself, not men with ideals, he
said loudly, pronouncing the word 'idails', and
jerking his head until his chins joggled like a
cow's udder. No one should shrink from being
well-fed looking. I found out later that the
Russian was a man of some wealth, though he
had made a rash vow upon the death of his wife,
never to indulge himself unduly. Being a man
of conscience, and feeling some awe in the
death of a person he loved, he was continually .
troubled after the most minor of his excesses
and could not bring himself to enjoy his
money. He often said, with feeling, that his
wife's death had been a tragedy. I sometimes
took this for one of his strange jokes but never
after I saw him weep over the telling of one
of the happy events with her in his youth.
I feel that I have had a spiritual cauterizing
in my life at sometime or another, or I would
not talk like this and think about it recurrently
as I do. But, if I am not presumptuous, I have
found that tragedies sink away and hurts bury
themselves easily in the years. And this is
probably the great disappointment of life, that
even the deepest things are evanescent. What
a shattering thing it is, to believe that. When
you do realize it you never have the same con­cern
with personal tragedy. I am afraid that
when you know that and have felt it your per­ception
is dulled. You become objective and
to a certain extent invulnerable. It does seem
to me that I have had a tragedy at sometime or
another, but I cannot recall it. And that un­nerves
me. Or is it that I have never felt deep
sorrow. That unnerves me more.
But I can remember the Booths and their
music-loving father and particularly well I can
picture one of the daughters, tall and dark and
vivacious, with a small mole on her left side
just above the hip, like a small island in a white
foam sea. Yes, she and I used to roam the
moors like Catherine and I suppose our hands
would reach through windows in the night and
our voices would haunt the bleak little cottages.
Her name I forget. It is just as well, for per­haps
it is with her my tragedy walks as I once
did. They were hardly moors, but we called
them moors and that is what they were. If
things are what they are by measurement of
the eye, it is like measuring time by clocks.
This is a woman, a young woman with rather
heavy legs and unruly hair and this is five
minutes, something less than three hundred
ticks of a magnificently efficient machine. Yet
those five minutes seemed a day and that
matchless woman was a goddess. I am sure. Of
course she was and those moments were every
bit a day, and the next five minutes may be a
second. And the next woman may only be a
woman with rather unruly hair and a small
mole on the side of her body just above, or
below the hip.
I will not deny that I have felt a certain zest
in it all, often in merely being alive. I will not
deny a certain beauty in breathing, in the
shuddering movement of legs, or the open
stride, in the quick snap and sparkle of fingers,
in the telling flash of eyes. Beauty is where
you find it, sometimes quietly in the silent
burning of elm leaves, sometimes in the verve
of shimmering willows, sometimes in the heavy
vulgarity of delicious profanity, more often in
the white snows of mental witchery and in the
simplicity of understanding. Even when he
starves, when a man knows he is walking
through great balloons of dough that open be­fore
him leaving a hollow path for him to fol­low,
even then the miracle of movement places
a grin on his spirit and he curses the bastards
for letting him starve. He may search the
13
world for knowledge and tear out his eyes be­cause
he cannot see. He may open his heart
and find none will enter. He may close it and
find it overflowing. Through it all stalks a
strange beauty. A soft naked body is a
sepulchre and two naked bodies are a monu­ment;
a truly naked soul will move mountains
and sound the boundless.
These are things I have known. They are
small things. I have been seeking something
great but I have not found it. I have been
frenzied with the emptiness of open life and
stifled by the hypocrisy of enclosed life. I have
sent my own spirits rocketing with a sudden
insight and plunged them shattered with a
query. And yet I have felt a certain beauty
through this . . .
. . . so I have just dined with my goddess
and yet, the fat Russian with the jowls and
the blue-veined lips was there and someone
else also. 0 what a meal that was! Two great
brown roasted turkeys steaming before the
carver and candles lit around the table, every­one
sitting quietly in repressed excitement, and
great glass bowls of maroon and red cranberries
before us all. And when we had pushed back
our chairs expansively with much grunting
and groans and other noises, the wine was
brought in and, though I was young at the
time, I am sorry to say I became quite drunk
amid the laughter of everyone.
Even now I can almost laugh at that. I can't
be, but I am. Chuckling at least. Perhaps it is
impossible, but I am chuckling, almost as if I
were not conscious of pain or sorrow or con­scious
that that is my leg over there several
yards from here, wherever that is, wherever
any place 'is now, and place on the map, here,
there, anywhere, Winnipeg, Regina, Exira.
Whimsey with a bitter edge might finish me.
But I do think all this should have a better
theme. I should be carrying a secret despatch
on which the success of the campaign depends,
and I should feel the anguish of failure and
then perhaps berate myself brutally and die
with someone or other's name 'burbling with
the blood from my lips'. Then my faithful dog
should seek me out and lament my death with
howls drowned only by the opening barrage of
the ill-fated campaign. I would feel more a
human then, more like Gary Cooper with clip­ped
speech and noble heart.
HAROLD KARR HAR0L 0'-11< A R R
XXXIV.
A special: Shakespeare play for fifteen cents-
With indexed notes. The clerk wore glasses, looked
as if she hadn't tasted moon, or brooked
night-shadows on the sky since tenements
became a fad. "Reduced a second time
for clearance"-cleaning out Euripides,
Rossetti, Boswell's "Life" Blake's prophecies­Her
pale eyes challenged me, only a dime,
deploying left and right as to escape
her eyes i mean. may i help, sir? the voice
was silk ... 0 lord canst thou help in this vice?
a headshake and from deep unciphered cup
of grace a smile ... then dazed retreat past zones
where gods in worsteds pressed for magazines.
XXXV.
the greatest poet is at home to us,
the perfect host, waiting for you and i
through all eternity. the ages try
his patience, and all scoffers (without fuss)
are shown the door and asked to wait in hell.
of course it would be scandalous to deign
laurels to all (that is-some would complain)
so the most tortured wights are asked to dwell
close to the muse in order of their zeal.
they say the greats are somewhat aged; i mean
swinburne still wears gloves and jonson's keen
on classics, but they've mellowed quite a deal.
wait . . . and be calm. now let us pray: "The sonnet
is a fixed form of life in length and rhyme ..."
14
A Survey of Canadian Politics
H. Goldenberg
-ROBERT BRIFFAULT in "Reasons for Anger"
A disillusion is the shock we feel when experience informs us that we have been fools,
and teaches us to be wiser than we were before. When men learned that the earth was not
the centre of the universe, they lamented for a hundred years over the disillusion and the
humiliation ... The human race is now entering upon a new phase of its growth. It is
being compelled by bitter painful experience to learn that such a growth cannot take
place in the individual human being without taking into account the social whole of
which he is a product-and a part-he is human, a partaker in the powers of humanity, by
virtue only of the social organism ...
Basic
View of
Politics
THE war has undeniably served to accelerate
the social and political consciousness of the
Canadian people in general, and the Canadian
youth in particular. Many incorrect impres­sions,
however, have been formed by the novice
in his mistaken attempt to interpret political
events and developments by correlating daily
superficial changes.
The confusing shifting political scene and the
contradictory actions of the existing political
parties can be understood only on examination
of the basic underlying economic factors.
The essential economic element that is the
principal motivating force in politics is the
rationalization of privately owned machinery.
By rationalization is meant the
process of the introduction of
more efficient machinery by the
enterprising owners of our re­sources,
natural and industrial, in
order to compete with and supersede their
rivals. Thus we see the development of two
tendencies, on the one hand, a progressive in­crease
of production until it has reached the
point where not only does it exceed the de­mand
of the home country (composed of a
large number of unemployed and semi-em­ployed)
but also exceeds the demand of the
world at large, and on the other hand a pro­gressive
decrease of the number of workers
required. Thus there are fewer consumers to
absorb the greater quantity of commodities
placed on the market.
15
To prevent complete chaos the owners of
our factories deliberately curtail production
since a scarcity of commodities brings higher
prices. Curtailed production or higher prices,
however, prevents the poor from obtaining all
the necessities they need, with the result that
we have a large dissatisfied element within the
country. This dissatisfaction and restlessness
of the people is greatly increased when a boom
or an optimistic tendency permeates our in­dustries
and we have a sudden increase in pro­duction
in the anticipation of a great demand.
Since each individual industrialist knows not
when to cease production-the anarchic char­acter
of our present system-we soon have a
great surplus of goods which cannot be ab­sorbed
by the people who have insufficient
money. This results in what is known as a
"crash" or depression. Commodities fall in
value, smaller factories close, and great num­bers
of workers are dismissed. It is only when
this picture is kept in mind that we can pro­perly
understand the role of political parties.
The Liberal and Conservative parties at one
time played an important historical role in an
epoch radically different from this one. Their
avowed purpose is to maintain the
Status Quo status quo. While expressing a
Parties willingness to permit minor
changes both old parties are
are agreed that the institution of private own­ership
of resources must remain intact. For
this reason it can be understood why these
Cause of
Chaos
parties are composed of and enjoy the support
of our wealthy industrialists. The objection
that the Liberal and Conservative parties may
contain real differences of policy is unfounded.
At one time, an important difference was the
question of Free Trade. At present, both part­ies
have lowered and raised tariffs wherever it
was found expedient. The Conservative party
bitterly criticizes the Liberal party's war effort,
yet no constructive alternative is put forth.
Thus it can be seen that any differences that
may exist are negligible. A change from a
Liberal to a Conservative 'government would
be in the nature of a palace revolution, a
change of personalities but nothing more.
One great example exists of an attempt
made to modify the present system while re­taining
the basic framework; this was the New
Deal in the U.S., introduced by President
Roosevelt. The attempt was far from success­ful.
An analysis of the situation will show why.
Any attempt to bring prosperity to a country
existing under a system such as ours, means
primarily that owners of private enterprises
(businesses) must show a profit. This does not
mean that there are no unemployed, for prior
to 1929-a period of great prosperity in the
U.S.-there were actually millions unemploy­ed,
and in direct proportion, the situation was
similar in Canada. Prosperity means therefore
simply business profits where concerns owned
by private individuals are showing surpluses.
Roosevelt obtained .a temporary superficial
prosperity by what is known as "pump prim­ing"
loaning sums of money to enterprises to
build and produce. Millions of the unemployed
were put to work on relief projects under the
W.P.A. These projects were deliberately or­ganized
to make USe of as little' machinery and
as much hand labour as possible, since other­wise
the work would have proceeded too
quickly. Another characteristic of this type
of remedy was that the work done by the un­employed
was a type of work which did not
compete with private business because this
would have taken away part of the profit from
private enterprise. The result of this situation
16 ta
was temporary inflation since everybody sud­denly
had money with which to buy goods.
Prices leaped sky high. Machines
started working at top speed. Had
the war not appeared, the im-mediate
ability of the machines to
produce in excess of the demand and their
tendency to do so would have again created
chaos and a much more terrible depression
because the productive potential of machines
had greatly increased. From economics we can
see the reaction upon politics. Roosevelt was
forced to dispense with the services of his so­called
radical brain trust. The Supreme Court
declared the N.R.A. unconstitutional. Finally
his Republican opposition became so powerful
that he was forced to embody them within his
own group. Even this would have failed miser­ably
to rectify the impending disorder had not
the war appeared to take up the slack and
save Roosevelt from the consequence of his
own actions. Very recently Roosevelt, the great
reformer, pronounced the New Deal officially
dead. Thus we see that one of the most radical
steps of one of the status quo parties resulted in
almost complete failure, for the essential
nature of the system, private enterprise, had
been left intact.
In our system there is the one essential­private
property, private ownership. You may
modify it somewhat by giving relief to un­employed
workers, subsidies to manufacturers,
but its dynamic tendencies, if suppressed, will
only explode with greater violence in the end.
In opposition to the Liberal and Conservative
parties and also in opposition to one another
are the so-called radical parties-Social Credit,
C.C.F., and Labour Progressive or Communist
party.
The Social Credit party is based upon an un­sound
and inflationary monetary policy. It is
regretted that the space allotted in this article
does not permit the writer to go beyond this
simple assertion as to its shortcomings. But the
fact that all economists of the various opposing
political groups support this assertion may
exert some influence as to its truth.
The C.C.F. party, which is historically known
as the Socialist party, believes that modifica­tions
of our present system are insufficient,
that a complete change must be effected; that
Progressive
Party
Plans
Common
Aim
the ownership of enterprises and resources
must be taken out of the hands of individuals
and turned- over to the government which will
regulate production to the needs of the people
and not for profits. The C.C.F. believes that
Socialism can be achieved by using the exist­ing
institutions of parliament and voting. Since
this party embodies many groups of diverse
opinions regarding the exact method of ob­taining
Socialism, ranging' from pacifists to
militant Socialists, this divergence of opinion
may be considered as constituting its greatest
weakness: the chance of disunity in the event
of an emergency. Emergencies will undoubted­ly
arise. Should the C.C.F. actually become a
powerful threat to the other contending parties
or even gain power, those who feel they have
most to lose with the disappearance of private
property may rally their forces of press, radio
and screen, as they are doing now, to create
confusion and disunity and finally rise in vio­lent
opposition against the Socialists. This has
been again and again demonstrated in Spain,
Germany, France and Italy. Opposition of this
nature will require constant unity on the part
of the C.C.F. Should the C.C.F. decide to re­sist
and do so in military fashion if the occa­sion
arises they will then be essentially the
same as the Communist party. Should the
C.C.F., however, because of the confusion
created by its disunity retire when it sees its
opposition girding for the battle, as the Social­ist
party did under Ramsay McDonald in Great
Britain, the C.C.F. will then assume the role
of a status quo party in that it will be purely
reformist. Only actions on the part of the
C.C.F. will demonstrate the nature of the party.
A reformist tendency has been recently dis­played
by the C.C.F. national leader, Coldwell,
who stated that the aims of the C.C.F. were
similar to that of the British Labor party.
The Labour Progressive party, which is an
expression of a tactical manoeuvre of the Com­munist
party, will therefore be referred to as
the Communist party. The Com­munist
party is almost military
in its organization, having a
strictly disciplined hierarchy. It
has a complete historical, economical and phil­osophical
background. Life has been inter­preted
as being a struggle. This is expressed
philosophically by Karl Marx and Friedrich 17
Engels in 'Dialectical Materialism,' economical­ly
in 'Das Kapital' and historically by the class
struggle. The final end of this party is similar
to that of the Socialists, the elimination of pri­vate
ownership of our great resources. Since,
however, the Communists have analysed the
situation and concluded that a struggle is al­most
inevitable in obtaining power,. its entire
structure and outlook Is violently opposed to
that of the C.C.F. Its entire composition has
been arranged in the nature of a weapon which
can strike quickly and efficiently when the op­portunity
arises. As decisive action requires a
unity of outlook, the Communists permit very
little variation in beliefs, and consequently has
a numerically small number of adherents when
compared to the other parties.
The relationship between the Communist
party and Russia is simply that Communists
believe that Soviet Russia is a truly workers'
country, ruled by 'workers for the workers.
They believe that interests of common people
of the world are identical with the interests of
.Russia and thus feel that Russia must be pro­tected
not only for the safety of Russia but for
the safety of workers throughout the world.
For this reason the action of the Communist
party is qualified, naturally, by the workers of
Soviet Russia.
All parties today have a common aim, the de­struction
of Fascism. To the status quo parties,
the destruction of Fascism means an oppor­tunity
to return to things as they
were. To the C.C.F., who have
continued politics as usual, the de-struction
of Fascism is an oppor­tunity
to obtain power in order to institute
something acceptable to its various groups as
Socialism. To the Communist party, who has
submerged its present struggle against the
status quo parties in order to proceed more
efficiently with the war, the destruction of Fas­cism
is an opportunity to make a positive bid
for Communism as the free enterprise world
continues to rend itself in internecine strife for
profits.
It is obvious that an article of this nature
cannot hope to deal adequately with any of the
paints brought up but can only touch upon the
(Continued on page 33)
"-
(
/1
I r r
.~
I
Souvenirs • • •
Yes, summer was lovely in the Bois
And perhaps the Sauterne might be a little sweeter
And the tiny bookstalls by the embankment with the eighteenth century
prints
No, never shopped for perfume. Was there a place?
And then Orleans
Sole frite?
Ah, always Le Quartier in the autumn, with the dust and the art students
-there was a little cafe on the St. Germain where the sole was delightful
Really?
And those flabby people who insisted on the Expo-Paris was too bour­geois
that year, too bourgeois
I was so ashamed, I was a mere child, and they always answered me in
English
Yes, interesting, isn't it?
An Algerian peddler, all over goatskins
And of course the taxis, no one could ever forget the taxis
Burgundy? 1h~nk you 18
Ann Phelps
An interesting face
Pity he sat just there, I can't see him now
Perhaps not so interesting really, that uniform always lends distinction
A little Hapsburg? Yes, perhaps.
Really?
But then one never knows
No, not seen the new Chileno with the odd technique
A genius? Possibly
Maddening, these things one only partly comprehends
But then, a certain crudity, so fresh, so almost delicate
Still, frightfully banal at times, these new departures
With the sweet Semitic profile? Yes
How interesting
He sings, you say?
Enchanting, voice like yellow satin
Really?
I was very young and very sick, and I sat up in bed and did sums in francs
and centimes until I fell asleep
A grim old concierge?
Oh, naturally
And a little shop down the street that sold bitter chocolate for eight
sous
Yes, Rue Jacob
But too, too many of the usual things
Queer sized grey paper I've seen nowhere else. Buff backed? You know
it? Of course, Reginaud's
I still have a pencil-stub-how silly of me
Then that horrid wine, like dirty vinegar
And I loved the creamy gendarmes in the summer. Yes and their little
capes. Did you see a negro? Of course, one always does
And then Les Elysees
Cigaret? 'Ci bien.
19
Ab-Normalities in College A6-Normalities
Students ...
College
Professor A. R. Cragg
YOUR EDITOR has asked for a sketch of a
few College types of ab-normalities around
our halls. Has he doubts about the sanity of
the present generation? Is he seeking a free
psychoanalysis? Is he having difficulties with
his Vox staff? Does he voice a public suspicion
of students, particularly in Arts? Might he be a
scientific student of human nature? Or, as
editors do, has he reached the stage when he
thinks everyone a bit queer but thee and me?
The ab-normal College student is not a dif­ferent
kind of human being; he is simply one
who is attempting to solve the more serious
problems of life but is doing so in an undesir­able
or inefficient fashion; he seeks for the same
ultimate goals and the same pleasures as does
the normal person, but he searches in the
wrong directions, and he searches inefficiently,
Accordingly, we shall define the adjustment of
a person as the characteristic way in which he
perceives, reacts to, and solves the main prob­lems
of life; for various reasons, certain of
these adjustments are considered poor or in­efficient
or abnormal. This paragraph should
steady you as critics in your judgment of others.
Psychology is not a short cut to happiness
in any of these cases. It is merely a guide-post
pointing out the long, rocky road that leads up­hill
to character and self-fulfillment by self­sacrifice
and discipline. Some people would
call it common sense. For these cases, common
sense was not common. For obvious reasons,
these are pre-war students. Do you know some
like them?
Helen was an older member of a class with
great desires to get an education but with no
20 2.0
energy to attend regularly or do her home­work
satisfactorily. Her own diagnosis reveal­ed
nerve depletion. Her doctor agreed. That
should be final. Extra-curricular activities
were, note well, helping her sister all her spare
hours in a grocery store, and singing in a choir
that demanded 100% faithfulness. There is al­ways
many a Helen (and Harry) carrying loads
of everything else but the courses on the regis­tration
card. Cure: surgery.
Margaret was the most natively smart girl I
ever knew. She literally leaned. out of the seat
to pay attention. She could sing like a lark but
was too lazy to practise on the piano. She knew
all the mediocre answers necessary to satisfy
teachers but would never look up the hard ones
in a book. She could have been an A plus; she
was a B minus. Through a long, painful pro­cess,
she is coming uphill by Edison's three
secrets of success: 1st, work; 2nd, work; 3rd,
work. There are no others even for the bright
ones. Psychoanalysis is strong on this finding.
It has no short cuts nor magic solutions.
Hugh was a genius. Unlike some geniuses
reported to be around these halls every year,
he knew thoroughly and worked at expertly
one accomplishment. When asked why should
a person like him need a general education, he
replied: Learn one thing as perfectly as you
can; and as many other things as you have
time and energy and liking for, and use them
all for your own satisfaction and in the service
of others. If that is true, there are some ab­geniuses
around. Cure: balance.
Legion was converted three times from he
didn't know what to he didn't know what.
(Continued on page 33)
. Biology Surveys Mankind.
Bradford Henderson
AS MORE knowledge is accumulated, the
application of biology to human affairs be­comes
more and more pertinent. Human in­genuity
has solved many of the intricacies of
nature. The old "theories" are rapidly being
replaced by observable facts. In the broad
2,000-year sweep from Aristotle to the present,
the biologist can now declare that he perceives,
at least, some order in the realm of life.
The biologist admits, however, that in the
understanding of "mind" the scientific method
has progressed no further than Galvani did in
the realm of electricity or Vesalius in' anatomy.
The greatest problem of all, how to control a
mind, shaped and moulded in the cave age,
remains essentially unsolved. In this respect
the Faradays and Newtons of psychology are
yet to come. Our factual knowledge of the
mind may be immense, but our fundamental
understanding .is meagre. A magic formulae
will most likely never be discovered, and the
only method which seems likely to succeed is
a careful inter-correlation of all knowledge,
and a patient concentration on the ultimate aim
-the happiness of mankind.
Continuity of the Germ Plasm
The way of advance in truth is essentially
the same as the way of advance in existing life.
Of two alternatives, the one most logical re­mains.
Thus a geocentric theory of the universe
was overshadowed by the doctrine of Coperni­cus.
We see this process at work in contem­porary
theories of the biological position of
man.
The dualists contend that mind is suddenly
injected into matter at a certain phylogenical
stage; that is, at the level of "man." Another
view asserts that there is no point in the order
of life at which one can say "there mind exists"
just as there is no point in the infinite gradua-
21
tions of matter from the virus to the visible
cell, from the cell to man, when "life" sud­denly
becomes manifest. There is an utter and
absolute continuity between the thinking and
feeling man, the feotus, the developing ov.um,
and his pre-amoebic ancestors. An identity
of element, ~ot only physiological, but
instinctual and perceptual, runs boldly
throughout the whole kingdom of life. This
identity of process, whether it be in the cell
of a fern, a protozoa, a dog's muscle, or the
human brain is so easily observable and so·
obviously true that men have had to realize
the "thread" which connects all living things.
It is explainable only upon assuming the con­tinuity
of the. central factor-the germ plasm
or protoplasm-throughout all living things.
Nature has assured this continuity by having
all living things born or arising out of other
living things. To the' biologist, an understand­ing
of this fundamental law is of great import­ance
in his understanding of men's mentality.
The continuity of the germ plasm, while ap­parent
in reproduction, is subject to the laws
of variation. It is not an absolute constant. In
the protozoan animaliculae we see a shuffling
of the chromosomes and cell division in every
200 generations. Obviously there is some im­mutable
change in the protoplasmic contents
which needs to be regulated. But the essential
process of life goes on, as far as we are con­cerned,
exactly as before. The theory of the
continuity of the germ plasm may never be
proved, but it is the most acceptable to us in
our study of life. To the biologist it is a
theory as important as the Copernican theory
is to the astronomer.
Relation of Man to Man
While belief in the continuity of the germ
plasm may upset some dogmas, it substitutes
a much more positive and practical dialectic.
We have become accustomed to an anthro­pocentric
view of the universe which is entirely
out of order with the observed facts. The
intricate adaptations of the' insect world to
environment alone should dispel this view.
The emergence of the adult butterfly from the
pupa case is a work of ingenuity which far
surpasses the birth of a human. In this instance
the pupa case forms a matrix or a mold, into
which the insect grows, and its removal without
strain or fracture, is a miracle which everyone
should watch. In other respects also, the insects
. have adapted themselves better than man to
environment. The mosquito has developed a
remarkable means of obtaining sustenance and
maintaining reproduction.
Amongst the helminthes, or parasitic worms,
we mention the hookworm, which divides itself
into two generations, one for travelling, the
other for breeding. The breeding worm is like
an insect. It burrows into the skin, enters a
vein, is carried to the heart, the lungs, crawls
up the trachea, down the aesophagus, into the
stomach, and finally settles down as a worm
in the intestine. The Rockefeller Foundation
estimates there are 90,000,000 cases of hook­worm,
and over 1,000,000 people in Egypt alone,
are bedridden through it. For an animal with
such powers of concentration and pure deviltry,
this seems scarcely surprising. Thus we can
see how an English zoologist declares that the
great battle' of the future will be man vs, in­sects,
and he does not wish to prophesy the
outcome.
Through these things we see the essential re­lativity
of man to nature. He is indeed "a one"
biologically, and not a being apart. He is sub­ject
to the ordinary hazards of life. He must
take his chances like every other living being
in the process of evolution and mutation. By
immutable laws of heredity he receives not
only the color of his eyes from his forefathers,
but also varied instincts and processes from
his cro-magnon and pre-human ancestors.
Regardless of his poor adaptation, when com­pared
to the insects, man is undoubtedly the
highest product of organic evolution to date.
With such anatomical handicaps, we wonder
how this can be so? The biologist replies that
man's evolution has gone beyond anatomical
perfection. It has included two more vitally
22
important things (1) Perfection of the nervous
organization and 'development of the power
of reason; (2) The element of mutual aid, or
ethical values, which 'has acted as a catalyst in
his mental and social development.
We can easily see how the anatomical per­fection
of evolution runs into blind alleys.
Once the horse has developed one toe instead
of five, it can go no further. In this respect
the one-toed ungulates have reached perfection.
In the parasite Balharzia we see an absolute
economy of effort in reproduction by a simple
development whereby the male is actually
carried parasitically inside the female! This
is also true of some tropical fish where the
male is attached permanently to the side of
the female.
The pachyderms (elephants) have developed
to the limit of efficient size. The malaria
plasmodium which is able to live in the blood
cell and breed in the mosquito gut has achiev­ed
perfection in its smallness.
All of these things are essentially adaptive
responses by living beings. Mankind, however,
has responded to the need for adaptation by
mental development. In this respect there is
no limit to his evolution, and no blind alleys
to run into.
However, the factor of "himself" now enters
evolutionary perfection. We agree that great
progress has been made in the last 5,000 years
since the earliest recorded history, and most of
us regard it as evolutionary in being. However,
5,000 years represents only 175 generations.
During that time, when we consider the esti­mated
30,000,000 generations which preceded
it, no fundamental evolutionary change could
possibly take place. Prof. Hooton' assures us
that the mental capacity of Cro-Magnon man,
was indeed quite comparable to our own. We
are forced to conclude, therefore, that our
evolutionary progress has resulted from inter­change
of ideas and experience, from a mental
altruism, and an objective" rational viewpoint.
That means that we are solely responsible for
our progress; that in it lies all hope of future
evolutionary perfection, and we therefore are
masters of our destiny.
') Apes, Men and Morons.
Influence of the Past
In this respect we could assume that regard­less
of the continuity of the germ plasm back
through countless generations, the individual
"mind" is capable of negating its influence.
However, this negative attitude has been in
vogue ever since the dawn of human intelli­gence,
and so far has produced little but a
plethora of taboos and mores. It would seem
much saner to realize what man's tendencies
are because of the continuity of the germ plasm,
to understand them, and to go on from there
in our attitude to society.
Individually, the power for complete re­pression
of the plasmal instincts is possible.
Repression, we must realize, is a normal func­tion.
In all organisms we see it as the control­ling
negative force which makes concerted
action possible. When stimulated the muscle
fibresact with all their might. Some however,
are repressed-thus a violent strain is not
produced. The nervous system of the lower
orders of invertebrates also acts on' the "all
or none" principle and the whole body moves
at once. In a higher order, such as the mam­malians,
some of the movements are inhibited.
It is this lack of repression which characterizes
some types of insanity. Thus we see that re­pression
is natural-it is a means of adaptation.
Actually therefore, it is the basis of our morals.
We see this process of repression vs. plasma
instinct most strikingly in the death instinct.
In the majority of lower forms there is an
alternation of generations. In the fish-fly, which
is so common on our beaches, the first genera­tion
is a worm. Out of that worm develops
a second generation, a winged insect, which
cannot eat since it has no mouth parts, but
which lives long enough to plant a million
eggs over a large area. It is a characteristic of
the second, or egg-laying generations in all
these forms that they have an instinct for
death. Their period of usefulness expires when
they have reproduced. Nature, at all times,
observes a strict economy.
There are many biologists who regard the
foetus as the first generation and the adult
human the second, or propagative phase. Thus
the death instinct" manifest in recklessness,
suicide, and masoschism is part of the primaeval
instincts we come by through the continuity
23
of the germ plasma. Almost always the process
of repression is powerful enough to overcome
the death instinct. Sometimes it is sublimated
in dangerous sports and dare-devil antics.
Occassionally it obtains mastery, and suicide
is the result.*
Morality an Adaptation?
Through the observation of adaptation in
lower forms we gain an insight into human
processes we had hitherto considered meta­physical.
It is a remarkable fact that adaptive changes
in anatomy usually involve a structure already
present. Thus in the echinoderms we see eyes
supported on exceptionally well developed
eye stalks. If we clip off an eye stalk the animal
will regenerate, not a new eye, but a leg, in
its place. From its anatomical position we can
see that the eye was indeed derived from a
leg.
This, and other comparative adaptive mech­anisms,
lead us to believe that morals, arising
as they do out of thought, which is itself essen­tially
an adaptive function, are modifications of
the will to survive. Man has found that the
killers ingenuity is always greater than the
peaceful defenders. The thief is more acute
than the householder. As Hobbes has said "the
natural state ... is poor, brutish and mean ...
continually at war."
Thus in order to survive, mankind has had
to invent morals. They are an adaptive mea­sure
much the same as thought, or standing
upright. When we understand morals as such
we are able to analyse and apply them with
greater objectivity and reason.
This is .the new "positive" understanding of
the sociosphere which a correlation of all
sciences, including biology, makes possible.
Through it should come revelations of thought
and action similar to the revelations of matter
induced by the scientific method inaugurated
by 'Bacon. /
") New Ways in Psycho-Analysis: Karen Horney.
(*The death instinct is most apparent in the in­sanities.)
We All Do It • •
Ray Atkinson
WE ALL Rationalize!!! You don't believe
me?-Then stay awhile. The simplest de­finition
of Rationalization is the making of ex­cuses
or alibis, defending ourselves fOJ;" doing
or not doing certain things, for taking certain
attitudes or making certain alliances. We drift
along until we are forced to face issues, then we
Rationalize in our defence, or w~ loudly justify
acts we feel instinctively are unjustifiable. A
little more complete definition of Rationaliza­tion
may be: a form of defence in which the in­dividual
gives socially actable reasons for his
behaviour either verbally, by thought or by
action, in making things seem to conform to
social usages, or in explaining away inferiorities.
We rationalize to escape the unpleasantness
of reality; to ignore things that seem to threaten
the well-being or good repute of our happiness,
security, family and friends. Rationalization,
however, is not as rational as the word might
appear, but is an attempt to make conduct ap­pear
sensible and conform with' custom and
social expectancy.
Force of Convention
The real reason for men joining the armed
forces, if they were examined, would contain
reasons far from the socially accepted ones of
patriotism, defence of home and country, to get
a chance to smack the enemy, family tradition,
to make the world safe for Democracy, etc.
While the above reasons are the ones most
often given verbally, there are a host of others
more important to the individual, some he
won't even admit to himself. A few of these
might be: the excitement of a new experience,
the chance to learn a trade, social disapproval
if he doesn't join, social acceptance after the
war, travel, friends in the army, unhappy mari­tal
or unhappy home conditions, escape from
debt, more money, chance to make contacts
with girls, escaping from being an individual
and letting others do his thinking, wanting
24
to fly a plane or drive a tank with its accom­panying
sense of power, and so on. However,
these real reasons or motives, of mastery, social
approval and sex are not ordinarily owned or
recognized. Convention has come to regard
these important drives as inferior or blame­worthy,
not acknowledged in polite society or
even by the individual himself, who has be­come
conditioned by that society.
Place in History
The whole history of the world has been
changed in this last decade by Rationalization.
Journalists, statesmen, authors like Van Loon
and Van Rassen and even Hitler himself, warn­ed
us of this present holocaust; but countries,
politicians and individuals all rationalized, con­vinced
themselves that things so terrible could­n't
happen or that they were secure in the
shadow of national, natural or treaty barriers.
They dubbed the prophets as radicals and
alarmists and promptly forgot about it or ex­plained
their depravity. Faced with the reality
of Italy's Ethiopian conquest and the occupa­tion
of the Saar Valley, they still rationalized­"
just local disturbances"-"Europe is always
squabbling." Then when Hitler "forced them
into war" they naively registered surprise that
such a thing could be possible. How could such
an upstart affect them? They were indignant.
Then started the frantic struggle to face the
reality of handling this upstart that they had
allowed to grow up. They blamed their politi­cians
for not preparing, for not disarming
Germany, for not supporting the League of
Nations, - a hundred and one things were
blamed. The policy of the United States with
reference to her policy of isolation and her un­expected
assault at Pearl Harbor are parallel.
Not Isolationists but blindfolded Rationaliza­tionists.
University professors are caught tight
in the net of Rationalization of their own weav-
(Continued on page 34)
Mary McFarlane
New Song
What is this strange new song
Sung from the land
With a blending of many voices
And a weaving of many airs
Into the one inspiration?
I hear in that deep-throated voice
An echo of wine-land and roses;
But here a man cries out harsh
In the agony of remembrance;
A woman's voice trembles with passion
Yet ever grows softer and sweeter;
And listen-a child sings forth
Without fear and in happiness.
A memory, a hope-a new melody:
The voice of a young people,
The song of a new land.
•
Slum Child
How can you teach me life,
More than this book or this master?
You are not learned or old, .
You are not Christ.
Yet-strange that I read of a cross
And still know nothing of sorrow,
Except as I see you smile
As you crawl back into your cell.
What use that I speak of pain
As something my body has known,
When I see your twisted hand
And your swollen twisted foot?
What do books know of anguish,
Of hopelessness, or soul-longing;
What do men know of death
Who have not looked in your eye&?
I was wrong.
You are learned and old;
25 And perhaps you are Christ.
Inside Canada
Ross Woodman
THE PRAIRIE BOY had gone down to the
sea and frowned at rugged bits of coastline,
and mountain tops, cold, silent, and dumb.
Now he was going home, back to his prairie
vision stretched outright like slumber. He had
seen things that were not in geography books,
or postcards, or the sighs of spring ladies re­turning
from a winter's retreat in the Empress.
He had felt a new kind of immensity, too gro­tesque
for beauty, out of human proportion,
lost in clouds and to imagination.
Past midnight, the train wound its way
through the Fraser Canyon, the coaches trail­ing
behind like a paper streamer in the twilight
wind. The color was gone, and the Fraser that
looked, by daylight, like a petrified stream (if
such there could be) was lost in mountain
blackness. By moonlight, the engine could be
seen twisting its way into denser mountains.
It reminded him of a nightmare he had had
while sleeping in the Caribou country. He had
dreamt of giants, moon radiant,' wrenching
themselves free from the earth and shooting
skyward with rock security. As .the train
darted among the mountains those giants were
rising again now in front and forever just be­hind.
The whistle of the engine rebounded
from the rock like shaking laughter. And
somewhere beyond this were the prairies with
their lifting horizons, waiting like dawn on the
other side of the world.
Canada had grown foreign to him that sum­mer,
the way a thing that grows too suddenly
and take on new and startling shapes becomes
foreign. His Canada had been the prairies, the
thing he knew and felt profoundly. Outside of
Calgary he had seen the mountains settled like
clouds, and he knew that ahead of him was
something that could belong to another world.
It was as though the prairies had awakened
from their slumber, and stood upright, pulling
26
up p. whole country by the roots. And in that
imagined upheaval there grew a people, subtle,
shallow, and loudly generous. Yet they were
also Canada's people.
Sitting in the daycoach, seeing about him
tired people resting upon each other, he knew
that these were Canada's strangers, strangers
both to themselves and to each other. He knew
that Canada was immensely big, a selfish land
of barren rock. He knew also that her people
would not all fit together about the kitchen
stove of a prairie farm. These Vancouver peo­ple
waited for the green signal before crossing
the street, and they talked far too much from
their Southern neighbors. On their faces was
stamped the imprint of a half dozen generations
of nobodys. These were the nomads of Canada,
people that had moved West for a hundred
faithless reasons. It was these people that talk­edCanada
right out of existence. To the prairie
boy they were people on the other side of the
mountain with a first loyalty to American tour­ists.
He had found a new Canada tailor-made for
sight-seeing tours. It had not the prairie gran­deur
that is seen only with long looking; that
comes thought-shaped into the mind, not in a
beaten path to the outlook. A prairie follows the
far-sighted course of the eye, and because it is
obvious you miss it. In the mountains you look
up a little to one side to get the proper per­spective.
In the prairies you don't do anything.
It's all about you, and you just look. Prairies
'are horizontal; it is a beauty of space, the kind
that has to do with the spirit of a man.
He had felt Canada grow that summer, and
seen its possibilities. They were possibilities
cut out by nature, that would keep Canada for­ever
a land of community interests. But 'out of
the different pulses of her people, the multi-
(Continued on page 33)
0 MOODS 00 S ...
IN HIS IMAGE ...
I caught a fly
and with indifferent cruelty
I tore off its wings
and grew happy as I saw
it creep and struggle
then I saw it turn and twist
and spin around in hopeless circles
and look at me with reverence and horror
and I knew at once
that I was a God ...
•
I WALK ALONE
and admire
the energy of the wind as it sighs along the
street
and twirls through torn papers and rude dust
stirring the wrinkled yellow dried leaves
and caressing the naked trees
I walk alone and wonder
at the joy of the wind
playing with the dead.
•
I saw the weaving helpless line
of hungry tired people
tramping from unkind lands
to places unknown
I saw their weariness •
and despair
and their questioning wet eyes
as they moved in weavy snail-like fashion
carrying pathetic wrinkled bundles and scraps
of what was once home and comfort
young and old slogging away from hate
young and old stumbling and crying and
wondering
men and women crawling broken with weari­ness
but the trembling giddy line crept on
to undefined unknown hopes.
27
A. C. Green
Lora Cantor
Impressions of Saroyan Impressions o~ Saroyan ...
SIMPLICITY is the keynote to the appeal of
William Saroyan as a story-teller. There is
not involved stage-setting and conscious at­tempt
at atmosphere production.. Saroyan ob­tains
his required emotional effects by writing
about ordinary people-about "kids, bums,
drunkards, gamblers, fools, homeless men, tra­vellers,
lonely men, Filipinos, Armenians, Rus­sians
and himself". These need no introduction
because the reader already knows them. Per­haps
he is just trying to remind you that you
know them.
There is a thread of idealism in Saroyan's
portrayal of people. He writes of them as he
would like them to be-as he thinks they
ought to be. If there is a wistfulness, it is be­cause
of a knowledge that there are few who
will ever be like that, and because of the utter
loneliness of the few who are. It may even be
that it is for those few that he writes.
There are many who have begun to see
William Saroyan as a symbol-a symbol of
youth striving for expression of beauty in
beauty of expression. We have even dared to
dream that we have been looking the same way
and at the same things as Saroyan.
Spenser has been presented to us as one
whose beauty and profundity of expression may
delight us today. One might read through and
about Spenser and find lacking that certain
vital warmth that is inherent in Saroyan. Or
compare Saroyan with the great psychologist
of human drama, Shakespeare. It is difficult to
say that William Saroyan is a lesser psycholo­gist
of human drama. The difference lies in the
emphasis. Shakespeare knew the weaknesses
of man and their effect upon him. He portrays
a man with a weakness. Through some acci­dent
of living this weakness is brought to the
fore and is fed. It grows and becomes more
28 28
than a small human weakness--it becomes an
obsession larger than the man himself. Mac­beth
spoke of having "only vaulting ambition
which o'erleaps itself". We must remember
that Shakespeare wrote for the audiences and
players of his day and something strong, stir­ring,
perhaps exaggerated appealed to them.
Saroyan is strong-he is stirring. But rather
than exciting you, he touches a familiar chord
within you. There are weaknesses in his char­acters
but they are there simply as a necessary
part of a man. Without them, he would be not
quite human; with them over-emphasized, he
would be perhaps even less human. There are
minor characters in the plays of Shakespeare
who are very like the characters found in
Saroyan. But whereas Shakespeare plays them
down and leaves you feeling a little sorry for
them because they are nice, ordinary human
beings, Saroyan takes these for his chief actors
and projects himself into them.
In all of Saroyan's writings you find one or
more persons in whom Saroyan has implanted
the essence of himself. You will discover in
them a certain knowledgable but not a cynical
wisdom. These meet other persons who are
lost and fumbling in misshapen ideas and bring
to them the warmth of humanity and feeling
of togetherness that Saroyan would like to
bring to the whole world of human beings. It
is an appeal to you to look at the world and
love it as he does and there is a beauty in the
very way he seems to rest assured that you too
can do this.
His play, "Hello Out There" is based on this.
It is the story of a young man who has been
imprisoned on a trumped-up charge of rape.
There is a girl who cooks for the prison. Not a
beautiful girl, to us, nor even a pretty one, but
(Continued on Page 33)
Jack Borland
COUNTRY ROAD
Summer 1943
She is an old woman, and she wears a babushka.
Even though I only see her back, I know that
there are wrinkles in her face, and that the
skin of her face is brown like leather is brown
and soft like a mellow peach is soft.
She walks with bent back, slowly swaying a
little, and I swiftly overtake her on the country
road in the morning sunlight.
My brass buttons shine in the morning sun­light,
for the road is not yet dusty, and the dew
still twinkles in the thick grass which grows by
the side of the road.
Because she looks so old, I feel young; because
she is so weak, I am strong. She is old and
weak, I am young and strong, therefore do I
address her as grandmother.
Hello, grandmother, I say.
Hello, my son, she says, only it is in Ukrainian.
I walk slowly beside her and say, It will be
hot today, grandmother.
She nods her head and sighs.
We walk on and pass a cow grazing among
poplar trees. An old truck charges past us
toward the city, and a little trail of dust spreads
and covers the dew on the grass by the side of
the road.
I say, It will be very dusty, too.
She nods her head and sighs.
We pass a man who ploughs -his field; the sun
rises higher, and the breeze becomes warm,
29
though it does not raise the dust. Presently I
learn that she has a son in the Air Force. He
is an officer, and a good boy. He looks like me,
she says.
I say that that is very nice to know.
She looks down at the road again On the side
of the road there is a boulder with Christ
Saves Sinners painted on it In big red letters.
Now and then she nods her head and. sighs.
Perhaps she is thinking of her officer son in
the Air Force overseas.
We come to a little farm. There is a house
made of mud, but you cannot tell it is mud
because it is whitewashed and even if it is
mud it looks very clean just the same. But
the barn is very close to the house.
She turns in the road to the farmhouse and
says, Good morning, my son, and I say good
morning, grandmother, only she says Good
morning, my son in Ukrainian.
She walks into the farmhouse, I walk up the
road, and presently another truck passes me.
This time the dust rises higher and covers my
shining buttons.
By the time I reach Birds Hill the sun is high
and hot on my neck. I climb the hill, and then'
descend..Looking over my shoulder, I watch
the little mud house hide behind the hill. First
the white mud walls, then the roof, then the
chimney, and then the empty sky.
I
To Be or Not to Be . . .
Peter Gordon White
United -- Macalester Conference Con~erence
goes through severe introspection
EXPECTANCY, excited greetings beside the
train just pulled in, flashbulbs. luggage,
overloaded and gasoline-rationed cars, first­night
re-unions, luncheons, banquets, and dec­orated
college halls-the thrill of the social side
of the now much-lauded International Student
Conference was as great as ever. It was still
as much fun to welcome "Americans" and
grasp eagerly at anything they might do or say
that might reveal how they were "different"
and they still seemed to tingle at the idea of
"coming up North."
It wasn't that the novelty was beginning to
wear off, and it wasn't because students no
longer welcomed the refreshing change from
the lecture method to Knowledge in holiday
dress, that out of the Conference itself should
rise the question: Does this thing make ;:tny
real contribution to students who are seeking,
if not the answers, at least an understanding of
the problems of our own day?
Value Discussed
The question was there in the Conference
even before it was voiced in the closing plenary
session. It slipped into the discussion groups,
and the perceiving few became aware of it. It
was found in the little threesomes and four­somes
where the best thinking is unhampered
by self-consciousness or the necessity of
30
making an impression. The deeper the thought,
the more accurate the facts, the more pressing
did the question become: Was there any use in
talking at all, or were we deliberately shutting
our eyes to the fact that what we did or said or
thought wasn't going to make the slightest bit
of difference anyway, that we were as impotent
as a blind horse harnessed to a mill-stone,
vaguely aware that we were the source of the
power, yet having no control over its uses or
our own course?
There were those who objected to such think­ing.
To them it is pessimistic, bad for public
relations, and, to say the least, is hardly cricket
after a great deal of effort has been taken to
arrange a nice conference.
Nothing could be wider of the mark.
The three-year-old Conference-baby never
showed a healthier sign than when it began re­flecting
on itself, its function in the scheme of
things, and its relationship to the world about
it. That it dared to carry the self-examination
to the point of yes or no on the matter of future
conferences is a display of intellectual integrity
of which the original sponsors and promoters
of the conference-idea might well be proud.
Strange Coincidence
Perhaps this introspective twist of the third
year of our interchange with Macalester is a
natural and logical stage in development. At
any rate, it is a strange coincidence that, un-
known to each other, both faculty members and
student delegates should be discussing the same
question. What is significant, however, is that
both should arrive at the same answer. In effect
it amounts to a re-affirmation of the belief that
in a democracy the things that 'the Common
Man is saying and doing and thinking are im­portant.
In that belief lies the strength and weakness
of our democratic system, the glory and the
shame of it, the source of all its most inspiring
triumphs and its most sickening weaknesses in
the realm of social justice, and in the story of
man's long struggle not only for existence but
for ther fullest self-realization of himself as a
rational human being.
There are those who seem to believe that
these conferences serve no purpose unless the
participants are the future leaders who are go­ing
to be in "power" (as they understand
power) . If that is true, then we may indeed
stop fooling ourselves about our "high serious­ness"
and call the Conference our International
Tea Dance, for, even though a former editor of
"Vox" has pointed out that one of last year's
United delegation has since become Premier
of the Province, we might as well recognize
that the majority of us will never sit in Parlia­ment,
or govern our biggest universities, or
preach from the most influential pulpit. Some
of us might not even be successful, as the world
judges success.
Final Analysis.
But does that mean that all our thinking here,
all our lectures, all our discussions, have been
but a useless waste of time? I don't think so.
After all, what is it, in the final analysis, that
is the great determining factor in shaping the
life of a community or a nation? It is the ever­moving
dynamic of the thought of the masses
which surges up from the life of the common
man to become articulate in the exceptional
man. Who claims any longer that Hitler be­came
the object of fanatical worship because
he succeeded in fooling the German people?
On the contrary, it was because he was the
very incarnation of their embryonic and inade­quately
expressed thoughts that he rose to a
height that both baffled and terrified the non­Germanic
world. Why did Churchill, whose
31
past record leaves so much to be desired in
matters of wisdom and judgment, find himself
with a solid and united nation under his leader­ship?
Because in the face of almost inevitable
defeat, with appeasement and peace lying in
ruins like their cathedrals, this man was the
voice and the agent for the thoughts of the
millions.
When the day comes that the purpose which
lies behind the United-Macalester Conference
is vain, and all similar projects, the countless
debating societies and discussion groups and
study circles and forums are but silly little
shams to give the "masses" a sense of power
without really changing things at all, then no
military victories will matter, for we will have
abandoned the very essence of what we are
supposedly fighting for: a society in which the
intrinsic worth of the individual is recognized,
a system in which his voice is heard, and a
world in which he may be proud to live.
The third Conference covered a lot of ground.
Some of our speakers were loaded with block­busters,
and more than one ofthem hit square­lyon
the target. The student leadership from
both colleges had something to say and knew
how to say it. The discussion was eager, even
if not rosily optimistic-some of the post-war
problems discussed led to anything but en­couraging
conclusions. But the most significant
event of this third year was our appraisal of
ourselves. The time may come when such soul­searching
is again in order, but until then we
re-form ranks and
"... Take up arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them."
Like a "Battle
Bowler"
a Savings Ac­count
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protection when
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now.
THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA
EFFORT • •
Winifred Polson
( p
-,
Now at this hour sleeps reason at the gates,
And slow and slow the ghosts come drifting in,
In to the passive stillness. Never was yet the grape
That ripened as desired; the rot within
Spoke through the bloom; or hidden among shades
Its unripe presence green affronted Time.
With sour, few drops the impatient earth is laved,
Its fall unseasonable mourned but by the vine.
See too the landward-striding breakers strive
With lacy crests and sonorous bellow deep
To shake the roots of that far misty cliff.
With ravening howl they charge the granite steep,
Leaving, with thunderous crash, tumultuous roar,
A little foam on an indifferent shore.
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32
The Graduates'
Literary Prize . .
Commencing with'the 1943-44 term a
prize of twenty-five dollars will be
awarded each year for the best creative
writing submitted by an undergraduate
in Arts, Science or Theology at United
College.
Professor Phelps has consented to act in
an advisory capacity and as chairman of
the Board of Judges.
Entries should reach the English De­partment
by March 15, 1944.
For more particulars see the previous
issue of Vox.
The Graduates' Literary Prize has been
inaugurated and will be maintained by
five graduates of the class of '43: Lieut.
Steven Otto, Lieut. Lorne Grainger, Ervin
Petsnick, Victor Gruneau, and John
Howes.
- .~- ..,
Inside Canada . . .
(Continued from Page 26)
plicity of outlook and environment must some­day
arise a nation strong and wise. Canada
would be both because her adolescence is slow
and painful. Someday the unwanted child that
is Canada would want "herself" and out of
natural growth her people would blend.
Quebec will grow to know us, and we to feel
something of the dignity and worth of her way
of life. Quebec cannot help but grow into the
outer Canada. She is doing it now, hesitatingly,
because she is -rightfully suspicious of much
that she sees. Perhaps she is afraid she is grow­ing
into nothing.
In modesty Canada is storing strength of
character, and the dignity of earth. The Tory
east, the American west, the French Quebec,
and the Prairie boy have within themselves the
embryo of a nation when someday they come
home to Canada.
•
Impressions of
Saroyan ..
(Continued from Page 28)
a plain girl who has been ignored, ridiculed and
downtrodden all her seventeen years by the
townspeople, by others her own age, by her
own parasitical father. The young man who,
one might almost say, portrays Saroyan in the
play treats her as another human being like
himself. When he sees her wondering dis­belief
at this, he exhibits a tenderness and
understanding that seems to reach out and en­fold
the reader or audience. The young man is
killed because of other people who have not
learned the simple things, and have only the
confused, involved, crass way of living. But
the girl is not left alone. He has given her
a "self" as a person and an assurance that
there are others like him and like her. Her
last words-the last words in the play-are a
33
sort of shy, tremulous, but confident greeting to
what is now for her a hopeful new world.
This, then, is Saroyan. Not a mysterious en­tity
called "the author", but a real person who
sits beside you as you read and who laughs and
cries and wonders with you at the world and
all the human people in it.
•
Ab-Normalities In
College Students.
(Continued from Page 20)
Psychological conversion is a change of pattern
. .. from what you do not want to what you do
want. It can be done. Legion made no attempt
to change his pattern. There is no guarantee in
psychology for a cure if remedies are not fol­lowed.
So you see abnormalities are just ab-normal.
Three of these cases found their own normal
_way of life. It proved happier and more effi­cient
than the previous ab-normal way. If we
mean by normal the mediocre, the dull, the
routine, ab-normality is preferable. Surely in
College, normality is something superior. Any­thing
less than this is ab-normal.
•
A Survey of Canadian
Politics
(Continued from Page 17)
highlights. An attempt has been made to pre­sent
the material, so that its statements are
self-evident truths, thus precluding the neces­sity
of too much explanation and the added en­cumbrance
of quotations from authorities. If
these words have served to awaken interest
and stimulate the student to look further into
the matter in the search for truth it has served
its purpose.
We All Do It ...
(Continued from Page 24)
ing regarding the war effort and their part in it.
Analyze some of their speeches and side re­marks
concerning the students!
On the Campus
We meet Rationalizationists face to face
around every corner of the University campus.
Students blame all sorts of incidental things
for their being late at class. They learn this
rationalization early in life from their parents.
To some, the real reasons for slight delays are
too accurate, sometimes embarrassing, and a
wonderful escape from reality is provided in
Rationalization. Just think of the reasons peo­ple
concoct for missing a lecture; a thread of
truth is grasped and spun into a net of Rational­ization
that often entangles the poor souls.
This business of Rationalization takes other
illusive forms than those described above. We
see those "sour-grapes" who depreciate things
they are unable to obtain themselves-a student
loses his best girl friend or an election, then
suddenly he didn't care anyway. Or students,
usually the ungifted ones, declaring that be­cause
a girl is beautiful she is dumb or that the
brainy, quick-witted students soon forget. How­ever,
these doctrines of balance have been long
since definitely disproved. They were the ra­tionalization
of parties trying to cover up in­feriorities
in themselves. Then there is the
Common Room "Sweet Lemon"; however
humble his fortune, it is just wht he wanted or
it was all for the best in the long run.
We also have students projecting their un­desirable
characteristics to others. For exam­ple,
a fundamentally dishonest person noticing
all the dishonest acts around him and loudly
proclaiming their depravity, or the chronic crab
and gossip! ! After examinations we find stu­dents
blaming their failures on the conspiracies
of others. Rationalization of the preceding
sometimes shades into delusion if the persecu­tion
is believed avidly enough and no amount
of logical reasoning will break it down.
It should be realized that Rationalization is
a very intricate mechanism used by everybody,
on others and within themselves, as a social
cushion to have other people's feelings, to save
34
their own, and as a substitute for reasoning and
reflective thinking. It is used by all types or
it is used as a mental cushion to ease our con­science
of some terrific responsibility that if
brooded over would send us insane. It is prob­lematical
whether to dub Rationalization as an
evil or a blessing, but whatever you classify it
as, recognize it as a mechanism you use in
every-day life, and being aware of its implica­tions,
use advisedly.
•
Editorial ...
(Continued from Page 5)
answer when he says: "Intelligence, which has
been, and is, crippled by its economic deter­mination,
can be restored to its natural effec­tiveness
and function only by emancipation
from economic interests. The aim of social de­velopment,
the abolition of class rule. is identi­cal
with the aim of intellectual development,
the ABOLITION OF PREJUDICE."
The elusive thread of Canadian unity is
showing little sign of becoming a cohesive,
binding chord. It is kept unattainable by dead
ideologies, by a laissez-faire educational atti­tude,
and by a vicious cycle of intellectual de­ficiency.
"Intelligence cannot operate freely in
one direction while it is habitually deflected
from its function by wish fulfillment in an­other."
In this we have the grief, and the sorrow of
the world ... the very grief and sorrow that if
not cured might easily make Post-World War
Two-Pre-World War Three.
') Reasons for Anger.
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LIBERALISM
in Religion and Politics in Relig'ion and Politics
(Continued from Page 8)
that the knowledge of the moral God deepens
the springs of human morality.!"
In all these things it is apparent that the view
of the liberal Christian is essentially that of the
) prophets. And unless he has succumbed en­tirely
to the conventions of formal science, he
will agree that it is the God of Amos and not
the unknown X at the conclusion of a meta­physical
problem, who can save the world. We
must not forget that ours is a great redemptive
religion. And although it is of great value to
be able to explain the world-the role of the
Christian is to overcome the world.
Jesus was much' more than a prophet. He
was more than the dynamo of righteousness,
He was the white heat of love. He was the Son
of God. Nevertheless, He stood in, and was the
consummation of, the prophetic heritage. He
certainly saw life as being full of meaning and
purpose and both of them as personal. Nor did
He ever divorce the religious from the moral.
There was always content in the experiences
of Jesus. It is worth noting that the feeling of
the ineffable, the altogether unutterable is
lacking from the gospel experiences. The su­preme
value of His experiences is depicted in
terms of moral reinforcement.
The basic positions of liberal Christianity
are orthodox. They are such not because of
the hangovers of tradition, but because as far
back as the days of the prophets
Orthodox the whole question of man's na­Liberalism
ture, conduct and relation to God
was grasped and understood. We
look to the past for guidance, not because we
have a Confucian outlook or backlook but be­cause
in our corporate experience we have
gained the principles by which the Future must
be approached, if we are to pass on a richer
heritage than we have received. It is in this
sense that liberalism is in possession of the
seeds of an orthodoxy that will never be out­moded.
35
Just as Barthianism owes its present appeal
to the failures of liberalism in religion, so the
totalitarian state has gained attractive power
because it sprang from the ruins of a decadent
liberalism in politics. "Totalitarianism comes
when liberalism has failed and it comes as a
direct result of this failure.:" Now all political
questions are at bottom theological. For im­plicitly
or explicitly every political system rests
upon some doctrine of man and of the value
and meaning of life. The philosophy of Levia­than,
the totalitarian state, is based upon a
materialistic and despairing view of human
nature. As stated by Hobbes it rests upon the
ideas that man is not by nature, but only by
contract a social being, and that man is not a
spiritual being made for freedom but a mere
engine, for, asks Hobbes, "what is the heart but
a spring; and the nerves but so many strings;
and the joints but so many wheels, giving mo­tion
to the whole body?" Totalitarianism is a
philosophy of despair even when, as in modern
Germany, it has assumed the form of Nietz­schean
romanticism. The philosophy of Rous­seau
although it began with the opposite view
as to the felicity of man in his natural state,
results in the same tyranny, as does that of
Hobbes. For both of them denied that there
were "unwritten laws eternal in the heavens"
the recognition of which is the only ultimate
basis for political freedom. "Man is by nature
neither the cowed wretch of Hobbes' imagina­tion
nor the blithe and carefree primitive of
Rousseau. W~ are not mere individuals. Our
nature can only. find fulfilment in our families
and in the fellowship of our neighbors and com­panions;
our home is not a mere convenience,
and the organized society in which we find our­selves
is not a mere institution demanding our
obedience or contractual service, but a spiritual
inheritance to which we owe loyalty and love
and sacrifice. So also we are not mere ,ce11s'
in the vast organism of the super-personal
State but ethical and rational beings for whom
the community is both a necessity for physical
life and a fulfilment of a natural and spiritual
need. Hobbes, Rousseau, and their progeny
2) McConnell, F. J.: The Prophetic Ministry. The
.Abingdon Press: 1930, p. 83.
3) Drucker, P. F.: The Future of Industrial Man.
New York: The John Day Co.; 1942, p. 215.
have led us astray because their doctrines of
man are radically false.'"
If it is true that a nation whose philosophy
is based upon a negation of the moral nature
of man leads inevitably to barbarism, then it is
equally true that a civilization that lacks any
articulated philosophy of life is travelling the
road of dissolution. Our present Western civil­ization,
as T. S. Eliot has pointed out, is neither
Christian nor pagan, but neutral-with a Chris­tian
bias. The nadir of a degenerated liberalism
was reached because we lacked an articulated
philosophy of the nature of man and of the
state, made dynamic by the impulse of a reli­gious
conviction. The casual and indifferent
manner with which we have given up our
religious philosophy and the recrudescence of
barbaric systems and beliefs in our time are
but two sides of the same process. I fail to see
any evidence for believing that our cherished
liberal democracy can be maintained save as it
is sustained by the Christian faith passionately
held by the people. For liberalism enters into
the process of decay the moment we approach
our way of life with hedonistic motivations.
Liberalism itself has not failed-it is we who
have failed to understand that the assumption
of our social responsibilities is a matter of
moral obligation and not mere prudence. Ap­peasement
is always the policy of a nation
guided by hedonistic motives. A people whose
actions are not governed by principles which
spring from a worthy view of the nature of God
and man is never capable of recognizing the
arrows of outrageous fortune until they are
securely lodged in their backs!
In our dynamic age, when the greatest social
fact of the time is the rapidity of social change,
we are confronted with a clear choice between
totalitarianism and a regenerated
Imperative liberalism. If it follows that the
Choice choice of the latter becomes an
imperative, then let it be recog­nized
that liberalism must be regenerated at its
roots, in its philosophy. And that the needed
dynamic is to be found in the Christian view
of the nature and intent of life and not in
eternal question marks.
Regeneration of our pattern of life hinges
further on our view of the nature of progress.
Progress has been a household word in our era.
It was the natural result of the evolutionary
36
theory and the simultaneous technological ad­vances
being made in every realm by applied
science. Our belief in progress was further
substantiated by the Spencerian doctrine of in­evitable
progress. Stepping into life was like
stepping on an escalator-we went inevitably
up! But it was a false doctrine. Inevitable
progress is an illusion. The accumulation of
machines and the creation of ever new devices
is too superficial a standard for anything that
is real. Unless we are capable of a correspond­ing
enlargement of our vision and of our spirit,
we are learning today that we will not progress
but retrogress. "The heart of Liberalism" says
Hobhouse, "is the understanding that progress
is not a matter of mechanical contrivance, but
of the liberation of living, spiritual energy?"
We believe that by co-operating with the spirit­ual
forces of the universe, man can more fully
personally and socially embody the forces of
good. That is progress. "I am come not to
destroy but to fill life full." That is progress.
This belief in progress is not based on anything
so fleeting as mechanical achievement but upon
our great historic view of the nature of man,
the nature of God, and the nature of our rela­tionship
to Him. Progress is a matter of moral
decision. And where else but in the Christian
metaphysic do we find a dynamic basis for
moral action?
The modern pulpit, at least, need not strike
any discouraging note. It has been the genius
of our faith that it has been most vital in times
of despair and chaos. Moreover, we are in
possession of a redeeming faith too rich in its
quality to be indulging in a sentimental moral­izing.
The Baals of ancient times have re­appeared
in more sinister guise and the crafty
Mercury has found clever men to rationalize
their appeal. And the mass of men placate the
gods, as of old. The times are sick for the want
of a prophetic ministry-shall the age find the
liberal pulpit wanting? Or shall it be that the
tree of our faith, stripped of its dead branches
by the raging storms of the day, shall grow
again in the springtime rich with foliage, per­forming
the dream of the dead! Per crucem ad
lucem-from the sacrifice flashes forth the
light!
6) Hobhouse, L. T.; Liberalism. Home University
Library: p, 137.
') Micklem, N.: The Theology of Politics. Oxford
University Press: 1941, p. 44.
UNITED
COLLEGE
WINNIPEG, CANADA